


Ribs

by The_One_Who_Writes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Come to the dark side, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Family Drama, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jedi Ben Solo, Jedi Rey, Now with added sexy times!, POV Han Solo, POV Kylo Ren, POV Rey (Star Wars), Slow Build, Yeah hi i'm jumping on this train to hell, Young Ben Solo, forgive me i'm new to the fandom, im making this up as i go, join me and find out, where am i heading? who knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-02-14 21:05:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13016115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_One_Who_Writes/pseuds/The_One_Who_Writes
Summary: Ben Solo is frustrated with his father’s fondness for the young Jedi apprentice Rey, but his aggravations run deeper than simple jealousy. Rey is, of course, oblivious – or is she?





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so a few disclaimers before we start: I entered this fandom about a month ago when I finally watched The Force Awakens. I made my way through the original three films shortly after, but was advised to skip the prequels (Jar Jar's reputation precedes him). So, that's where I'm at in terms of fandom knowledge. I've cobbled this together through extensive wookiepedia searches and other fics I've read, because I am what? Trash. In my head Rey is no more related to Ben Solo than I am. I am burning with this ship.
> 
> Otherwise, sit back, relax, and prepare to cry with me. I have no idea how often I'll update (hopefully often), or where I'm going (hopefully somewhere with a happy ending), so please feel free to pepper me with suggestions! I may or may not take them. 
> 
> Em

Han never claimed to be any good at this parenting deal. He liked life better when he knew where he stood; smuggler, bandit, and misfit were labels he could manage. But father? He didn’t have any contingencies for this. There was no magic sense which would guide him to make the right decisions, no academy in which masters could instruct him as to the best course. Nobody was teaching this stuff, and even if they were he probably wouldn’t take much notice. It was just who he was. Leia had given him pause, hell, she’d beaten him into submission, and he’d been grateful to her for that. She was stable where he was not, responsible in ways he could never hope to be. Sometimes he swore the only thing he ever did right was allowing himself to love her. He was, in his way, a comet passing by her indomitable sun. He didn’t burn as bright, and to try and level with her was pointless. He could only pass within her orbit intermittently, before either one of them grew frustrated – why, with a love like theirs, could they hardly be in each other’s company for any length of time? – and Han, always Han, was sent careening out into the cosmos.  


Ben could hardly have been expected to change that, but he grew within Leia, a part of her for 9 long months, of which Han could only truthfully say he stayed 7. She was irritable at the end, more so than usual, and it was only when he received a panicked message from one of Leia’s subordinates that he returned. If Leia was hot-headed when not being subjected to the pain of childbirth, then she was a volcanic eruption during the 4-hour delivery. Han felt the bones creak in his hand as she squeezed, in awe of her suddenly preternatural strength. She said very little, but holding the tiny infant in the crook of her shoulder, triumphant as she was in all things, Han felt he could burst with pride.

It worked surprisingly well, in the beginning. Han felt no urge to suddenly be alone on the Falcon, slinking off among the stars. He held Ben in his hands, so small he could be cradled along one forearm as he would gleefully discover, and his tiny weight secured his feet to the planet in a way nothing else ever had before. He loved Ben with a ferocity that was almost frightening. The feeling was instantaneous, the certainty that he would never be alone again. It ran deep within his core, a kinship with this babe who he had known no time at all. It took nothing to fall in love. But it took everything to be a parent. Ben grew quickly. Soon he was toddling through the Resistance base as if it was home, a menace to watch. He evaded Han with a deft skill he could only assume was hereditary, but his uncle Luke was never hidden from. Even Leia, who though she was sweet on the boy had her moments of fire, was better-liked it seemed. He was young, they would both console him, and children were fickle. But Han still felt the pang of rejection whenever he would try and engage Ben with talk of off-world space, only to be interrupted by Luke simply walking past the room. It was as if he was magnetised. 

It was the Force, he would come to understand, which instilled this pull. A gift from his mother, whose sensitivity she had never honed to the consternation of her brother. A 50% chance he would be able to tap into that limitless power, and of course his odds were good. He was still a Solo, after all. 

Ben was 11 when he was inducted into the academy, a day of great pride. Luke, of course, would mentor him. 

Han left the same night as his son, though his destination was not so secure. Leia, mysteriously understanding, would send him regular updates as she learned of his progress. There were high hopes; his initial tests revealed great potential. That was the Skywalker in him. 

And so he was the one to pull the first thread which began to unravel them. He journeyed farther, took more jobs, and busied himself. Not as a method of evasion, he told himself whenever Chewie brought up the fact that it was Ben’s birthday, or that it had been 18 months since his last visit. Certainly not. He was needed, here was where he was useful, where he _felt _useful. The Falcon had never been in better shape, and the more money he could gain from his work the better he could provide for Ben. Never mind that Leia was fast being promoted through the ranks of the Resistance, and Ben wanted for nothing at the academy, except for perhaps a visit from his father. He was building a savings fund. He was doing good work, semi-honest work. He recruited when he had the chance, sending any promising Jedi candidates to the academy to be tested. That, if nothing else, was important.__

____

____

“It’s his 18th tomorrow,” Leia told him wearily over the holo, “you’re only a star system over. It would mean a lot to him.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied, non-committal as ever. 

The party itself was bland. Ben had grown taller, a recent growth-spurt he had been informed, and his hair grew thick and black and untameable. Han tried to see some of himself in his son’s surly expression, but he struggled to discern his strong eyebrows, always furrowed from concentration, within Ben’s barely-concealed frustration. Luke was disapproving – the party was a distraction from his studies. A Jedi knight had no need to mark the passing of a year, the Force granted extended life. He attended, however, in his usual training attire, a solemn grey spectre always nearby an exit. Ben didn’t look back to him once. No more hero worship there, then, Han thought with a hastily-quashed feeling of satisfaction. He took up a cup: it was children’s mead, too sweet for his matured palette. He sipped it again out of politeness before abandoning the drink entirely. 

He settled back in his chair to watch Leia, how she moved around Ben. Motherhood suited her. She was so firm in her hands still, pushing cups into grasps and absent-mindedly clearing plates with small shivers of the Force. Luke didn’t appear surprised at her misuse of sacred power, but he bristled in the corner opposite Han. Always too uptight, that one. Leia smoothed Ben’s hair back, stoutly ignoring the way it flopped back over his face immediately. It took a second for him to recoil, and something in the hesitation made Han smile. Ben’s eyes found his across the long table, a cool measuring gaze, before they darkened and he looked away. Han felt as if he had been slighted. He pushed his boots up onto the table, leaning fully back in his chair with an air of affected nonchalance. 

“What have you been learning, son?” He asked, stilling the room into silence. Leia looked pained. 

Ben’s shoulders tensed, hunched slightly, and he looked at his father with the kindling of a fire in his adolescent face. He didn’t look away. Good.

“Ben has been making progress with control,” Luke interjected, perhaps relieved that the topic of conversation had turned to something he could partake in, even if the atmosphere rotted around them. “His Force connection is the strongest I have sensed.”

His fists, loose by his sides, clenched at the word ‘control’. 

“Yes,” he agreed, his voice surprisingly deep. A man’s voice. 

“Care to show me?” Han allowed the challenge to slip out before he could stop himself. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel sorry about it. 

Ben was quietly furious, standing at the head of the table, a child and not a child, a man and yet not quite a man. Tension rolled off him in waves, impervious to the strong hands of his mother touching his arm with a mind to calm him, but all the while glaring daggers at Han. Let her stare. He would pay the price later. 

“Of course.” 

The cup of sickly mead in front of Han began to levitate very slowly. Ben didn’t move at all, but his eyes were burning a hole straight through the glass in his focus. It rose higher, beyond the table, and without so much as a warning deposited its contents directly over Han’s head. Perhaps he deserved it. 

Looking through his now-sticky eyelashes, he watched his son storm out of the room. Leia lingered only to release a sigh which sounded like she had been holding it since Han first walked in, before following him. Luke was smiling, ever the proud master. 

“I think you have some things to teach him,” Han muttered, more to himself than Luke.

“So do you,” he countered with a wry smirk. Han did what he did best, and left. 

The mead smelled, strong and acrid on his clothes. It had been a mistake to wear cream. 

“Hey, what’d you do?” A voice, young but loud, piped up as he traversed the corridors of the academy. 

Han looked down, finding a small Jedi apprentice squinting up at him, her miniature training attire strangely endearing. She had a wooden training baton in her hand, but she was utterly focused on Han.

“Something stupid.” He admitted truthfully. The child’s face broke into a grin.

“I’ll bet. You’re Ben’s dad, right? Han Solo.” He nodded. “You fly the Millennium Falcon.”

“Yep.” Han was astounded at the child’s forthrightness. 

“I’ve seen pictures. YT-1300f light freighter. Quadex power core. Modified sensor-proofing.”

“Right.” And she was. 

“Can I see it?”

Han paused. Just for a second, just long enough to think huh. Then he beckoned the Jedi to follow him as he strode through corridors and hallways towards the port, where he knew the old Broken Bell was waiting. Her tiny steps behind him were… charming. 

The expression on her face as she first beheld the outer shell of the Falcon was all he had ever wanted to see. There was a flash in his memory of a smaller child, his black hair ducked as he submitted to be shown around his father’s greatest treasure. He waved it away. 

“What do you think?”

“It’s so old,” she exclaimed, delighted. The insult juxtaposed with the wondrous expression startled a laugh out of Han, short and rough. 

“Yeah, she’s a tough lady. Wanna see inside?” Her head almost detached through fervent nodding. 

Han opened the loading port, the ramp descending with a slow hiss. He motioned her inside, bowing as she passed by him as if she were a regal passenger. Her answering giggle warmed him through. He followed her up, leaving the ramp down behind him. She was fast – she hadn’t waited in the entranceway like he’d expected. 

“Hey, kid,” he called, and she stuck her head around a corner. “Not so fast, okay?”

She nodded, and he wondered how she hadn’t strained her neck like that. He gave her a short tour, cut shorter by the fact that she couldn’t stop touching things. Her hand seemed to shoot out independently of her body and tug at exposed wires, fiddle with loose buttons and open data panels to peer inside. Her tiny fingers were nimble, and she delved into complex machinery as if she had been born to do it. She named everything as she went, her mouth a running motor, stumbling over long words and picking itself back up and carrying on, almost a compulsion. She glowed and preened, squealing with delight when a set of wires she had absently pulled apart and re-fixed let loose a few sparks. Han couldn’t stop her if he’d tried. Instead, her talked to her about the ship, all the modifications he’d made over the years, how many extra cables now ran through the walls and floors and ceiling. She lapped up information like it was water in the desert. He mentioned an issue he’d been having with one of the power converters, and her brow furrowed almost comically. She was looking at Han as if he was an idiot. 

“Show me,” she commanded, and he led her into the belly of the ship, her busy fingers fiddling as they went. She seemed determined to touch every part of the spacecraft. 

He opened the panel where the converters were stored, and the girl pounced. Han thought he saw her bite a wire which wouldn’t comply. It was only a few minutes before she resurfaced, grinning, a smudge of grease on her cheek.

They raced each other to the pilot’s hatch. Han flicked the switch, waiting for the clunky start up, but the ship hummed as if it was her first day flying. Han looked at the girl from the pilot’s seat, ignoring the fact that she’d seated herself in the co-pilot’s chair as if she belonged there.

“Who are you?” He asked, his pride hurt, his curiosity aflame. 

“I’m Rey,” she said. “Just Rey.”

“Dad?” It was Ben’s voice, gruff as he climbed into the Falcon. “Are you leaving? I-”

He stopped at the mouth of the cockpit, drawing himself up tall and haughty at the sight of the youngling in the co-pilot’s chair. 

“Son.” Han felt guilty, but he didn’t know why. 

“What are you doing with Rey?” There was barely-concealed accusation there.

“I fixed the power converter,” Rey supplied cheerily. 

“Power converter.” Ben sniffed. “Luke wants to see you. Off you go.”

Rey hopped from the chair to the floor and ran past Ben, nearly knocking him flying in her haste. Han couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“I’m sorry.” Han said into the silence which descended after Rey had left. He was sorry, about so many things. 

“As am I,” Ben replied, entirely untruthfully. “That youngling – she fixed your ship?”

“I don’t know where you found her, Ben-”

“Jakku,” he supplied curtly. 

“Stars, that junkyard? She’s really something. I think she rewired the whole ship, and she can’t have been here more than 10 minutes. She’s in training to be a Jedi?”

“Yes, that is the purpose of this academy,” the sarcasm rolled thickly, instinctual, and it surprised them both. 

“I see. Well, I had a good time, Ben.” He stood up, moving to shake his son’s hand. Ben hesitated before taking the proffered palm, giving it a single perfunctory jerk, his grip formidable. 

_His mother, resolved not to scream, throwing her head back and howling, the pressure unbearable around his fingers. ___

____

____

“It was an experience.” It was said in agreement. 

“Tell your mother I’ll holo later. I think she needs some time to cool off after our little show.” He said it conspiratorially, the beginnings of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. 

Ben’s face twisted with something ugly – a smile, but rueful. He released his father’s hand, taking a deliberate step back. When his eyes met Han’s, they were distant.

“Of course, father.”


	2. The Leap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's taken a leap of faith and started reading this. It's only small now, but it's very dear to me. I still have no idea what's going to happen, but that's exciting, right?
> 
> I still have not watched The Last Jedi, I aim to see it this week! So there aren't any intentional spoilers, and even after I watch I won't spoil it because that's just fucking wrong, dude. 
> 
> Enjoy a bit of Rey's perspective, guys. Comments and kudos are always gratefully received.

Rey remembers everything except the people who left her. 

She remembers the way the dust used to filter into the air vents of the toppled AT-AT, each grain shimmering in a ghostly fashion as they drifted through the air heavy with heat. She can recall the precise number of marks etched into the wall, and if you asked she would probably lie and say she didn’t (3,605). She can reconstruct the junkyards by category; the digital machinery, the solar technology, the lithium sector, and that which was truly junk. She could salvage almost anything from the first three categories, but the fourth, though it was the smallest part of the scrap heap, even she couldn’t revive. She had worked hard to gain the skill and knowledge to survive. She had two weapons before her trusty staff – a dagger of kinds which blunted easily and took too much effort to re-sharpen, and a blaster she’d stumbled across. The blaster had lasted only three days before being confiscated in the interest of public safety. The next day she made the staff, and never looked back. 

She remembers how difficult it was to fashion clothes as she grew. How her garments split at the seams, how she clumsily tried her hand at sewing them back together. How her skin burned in newly exposed areas, in strange patterns, how she ached and scratched and wretched at night trying to sleep comfortably. She woke surrounded by her own skin, like a snake, until she was weathered and her body toughened like leather, entire constellations of freckles winding their way down her arms, back, and legs. Some traders passing through took pity on her, eventually, giving her an oversized poncho which she cut and stitched until it became liveable. Her work wasn’t kind to clothes. She was better at fixing engines than ripped holes. She soon came to look as she felt: abandoned. Despite her meagre rations she grew quickly, like a plant deprived of sunlight grows thin and tall. She was searching for light, in her own way. In spite of it all. 

She had spent 8 years on Jakku give or take, living from day to day, always on the edge of existence, when she finally gained the courage to do what she had thought of often, but never dared voice aloud. She took her daily water rations, by then barely enough to take a drink, and looked at the cluster of ships in the market. It was small pickings. The biggest was a small transport vessel docked to dump the tattered remains of a batch of droids. She loitered next to a tent selling counterfeit Zabrak jewellery, pretending to look at a gaudy necklace pendant while the pilot of the transporter spoke nearby. She didn’t recognise the name of the planet he was travelling to next. The merchant selling the Zabrak jewellery began to shout at her in Huttese. She was fluent, but she feigned ignorance, her mind ticking over as she began to shake. Her feet seemed rooted, but her arms grasped for the tent poles of the hut as if she intended to drag herself over to the ship. 

She was trying, desperately, fruitlessly, to remember the face of the woman whose fingers she had clung to all those years ago. The propellers of the ship hovering nearby had blown the desert sand into a frenzy, and her eyes were gritty and streaming as she looked furiously towards… her mother? She was no longer sure. Rey had been, she averaged, five years old when she was left on Jakku. She had spent longer on the planet than off it, and she hated that this must be her homeworld – there were no pleasant memories of another place and time to harbour in its stead. She hated the uniformity of the dunes, the dirty shambles of the market and the fact that even though he saw her every day, Unkar Plutt refused to learn her name. She hated being ‘girl’ and ‘scrap’ and ‘mutt’. She hated that it was not the hope of a better life which moved her, but her resentment of her situation. 

But she moved.

She slunk towards the exposed undercarriage of the transporter like a jackal stalks its kill. In the busy marketplace it was easy to move undetected, and Rey was strangely calm as she climbed into the droid holding bay, burrowing her way amongst sad-eyed deactivated machines. She dug until even with her eyes wide open all she could see was darkness, all she could feel was cold metal parts. It took her a minute to realise she had left her staff leaned against the jewellery stand, and it was that thought above any other which broke down her last vestige of defence against her emotions. The first sob bubbled out of her like a surprise, and then fat tears squeezed their way from her eyes down her cheeks, dripping onto her cotton shirt, and she was heaving with them. She bit down on her fist, hard, muffling her pathetic outburst as the pilot returned. The hum of an engine beneath her, and then the lurching feeling of weightlessness as they took off sent waves of roiling nausea through her, giving way to a sick feeling of relief. She grinned around her fist, even as she was bruised and beaten by the various metal appendages surrounding her. 

It would take hours for the ship to arrive at its destination, which as it turned out was a fairly different planet than the one she had left behind, known as Yavin 4. Attempting to stay quiet as she practically vibrated out of her skin from excitement was one of the harder tasks of self-control she had been set. She had to wait for the pilot to vacate the vehicle, and then she was paralysed for another 10 minutes thinking of all the planets she could have landed on. What if it was a planet perpetually covered in fire? What if it was a water planet? Rey couldn’t swim. There was no worse thought, however, than the pilot having realised she was on board halfway through the journey and turning back. She would take fiery pits and watery graves over listless desert any day. 

She would gain the courage to exit the transport vehicle eventually, and her first steps on the new planet felt lighter than air. This was partially due to her legs having lost feeling in their folded position for hours on end, and she nearly fell over several times as she staggered away from the ship. Rey, cursed with her near-perfect memory, would remember the first time she looked at Yavin every time she closed her eyes. 

It was perfect.

Lush, green and richly dense; Yavin was entirely alien to her. The air was dense with moisture, and she began to sweat almost immediately. The sky was overcast with thick cloud cover, and the colour beige was nowhere to be seen. Rey had fallen in love dangerously fast. She hobbled into the undergrowth after getting over her initial shock, fervently aware that the pilot could return at any time. In her head, she sent him thunderous applause and cries of thanks, but in reality she turned away from his unknowing kindness towards what was to her a new start. She began by peeling off layers. Her underclothes were already stuck to her in the humidity, and she shed her outerwear easily – there was no sun to protect herself from on this planet. Her hands felt empty without her staff, so she filled them with the fruit which grew in bushels and clumps around her, fat berries and soft plum-like growths which intoxicated her with their smell. They tasted slightly bitter, and the juice which burst forth from her bite ran sticky down her chin and neck. It was almost overwhelming to finally taste flavour after a lifetime of blandness. There was a dull humming in her head, like the onset of a migraine, but she wilfully ignored it. Perhaps it was the fruit – it had been so long since she’d consumed anything which wasn’t dehydrated. 

She was covered by undergrowth where she sat and ate her fill, and it was comforting to be hidden. Constant exposure was a staple of desert life. She couldn’t remain there forever, this she knew. Rey discarded the rinds of the fruit to the jungle floor, and ever so cautiously peeked from beneath the spread of a thick-stemmed leaf. The transporter she had arrived on was still docked, the pilot smoking from a metal pipe leaned up against the cockpit. There were other ships, too, which she had neglected to notice in her initial panic. Small, compact patrol ships, built for speed and little else. Beyond the barely-there platform they were resting on, a small hut stood. It looked sturdy enough, but Rey guessed it acted more as a halfway point for pilots between flights. The doorway was lit from within, and she took it to mean there were more people inside. The pilot emptied the butt of his pipe onto the platform and walked inside, emerging a few seconds after with two more men. Well, one more man. The third companion, though he was tall, could not have truthfully been older than 16. 

Their conversation became understandable as they drew near, Rey’s ears pricking at the sound of a language she could converse in. Not that she expected otherwise; it was rare and disconcerting that she found herself unable to understand and in turn speak a language which travelled to Jakku. But this time she was the traveller. 

“Have you any parts for an Astromech model?” The older man spoke, wearing robes which reminded her of sandpeople. 

“You’re welcome to look,” the pilot said, turning to his ship to open the cargo bay and hesitating once he found it was already open. _Sloppy _, Rey admonished herself.__

__“Ben, would you mind?”_ _

__The boy looked as though he minded very much. He peered sullenly into the jungle, and if Rey were not certain she had hidden herself completely, she would have assumed he was looking at her. He barely blinked, and hesitated a moment more, but turned to the transporter reluctantly. He lifted his palm, his eyes closed and forehead smoothed in concentration, as if he were performing magic. The humming in Rey’s head grew loud, momentarily unbearable, like a sharp hammer strike to the temple. She couldn’t stop the small gasp which escaped her. Hawk-like, the boy’s head snapped onto her position, and he moved with such surety that Rey knew she had been discovered. He drew from his belt the hilt of a weapon, and pointed it threateningly at the leaf which shielded her face from view._ _

__“Ben!” The older man rushed to stay his hand, and Rey felt her heart slow incrementally from a rabbit’s pace._ _

__He pulled aside the foliage, exposing Rey like a cornered animal. Her eyes darted between two gazes; the accusatory, barely-concealed revulsion of Ben, and the curious, concerned look from the older man. She considered running, turning tail and disappearing into the brilliant density of the jungle, but immediately she was turned away. Ben must have read her intentions in her face. His light saber flicked on, a gentle warning._ _

__“Hello,” the older gentleman said, throwing a warning glance Ben’s way. “I’m Luke. What’s your name?”_ _


	3. The Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Ben’s perspective for a palette cleanser. Thank you everyone who’s sticking by my humble little fic even though my story is scrambled and only just beginning! I appreciate each and every one of you. Next chapter begins our slow burn...

Ben hears voices sometimes. In his sleep, yes, but not always in the cover of darkness. He hears whispers in empty rooms and hallways, and they cut through the lunch hall chatter to press against his ear almost physically. He becomes schooled in an unresponsive expression. He finds himself waiting for the next voice, for there are a few, and he grows anxious if days pass with only his own thoughts for company. He isn’t sure what they say – it’s a dark tongue, lathered thickly with vitriol even in hushed tones. Intoxicating, even as it makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t tell Luke, because he suspects even if he cannot be sure that the voices are considerably darker hued than the wizened, archaic telling’s of Jedi ancestors. The more he learns, the greater his suspicions grow. By that point it’s almost too late; the decent waiting time of self-doubt, the realisation and consolidation that something’s not quite right, and the seeking out of a friendly ear seemed beyond his grasp. He would slip up occasionally, everyone makes mistakes after all, but it would give some of the others pause when he would stop or tilt his head as if to hear someone better when nobody was speaking. 

Luke suspects, of course, he’s always been able to see right through him. He waits, though, as if he’s expecting Ben to confide in him. He doesn’t.

He continues his training, and continues to excel. He doesn’t linger on the days which pass, or the milestones he reaches which in turn go by unnoticed by anyone of importance. It’s too worldly, besides, and the Jedi pride themselves on being unbothered by the average workings of the universe. Concerned with higher matters, like levitating an orange until it rots. Or he does. It’s a close call. 

He enjoys sparring. Not for the reason everyone thinks, he knows what they think when they watch him swing the training saber around like a club, intent on clobbering his opponent into submission. They see a time bomb, a live wire, exposed and flickering dangerously. It’s pre-coded in his genes that he be subject to some scrutiny, he understands this and has accepted it. But he’s grown up with these apprentices, and while he’s never grown close with them like they have with each other, he expects more from them than to assume. It’s why he clobbers them, occasionally. Other times he’ll relax into it, like a game of chess. A game of mentality, of assessing one’s opponent and making judgements under time pressure. It’s as likely you’ll make a wrong move as it is you’ll emerge victorious, and Ben lives for this thrill. He loves the thrum of his pulse in his thumb as he presses it over the hilt of his saber, and the bob of a swallow in his partner’s throat when they realise it’s him they must face next. 

They talk to him more often in those moments, in the midst of a fight. While he cannot understand them he imagines they’re words of encouragement, and they bloom inside of him, hot and invigorating. He translates for himself. Finish them. You’re holding back. I’m so proud of you. He can’t quite correlate that last phrase with the shadowy whispers which lurk in the bottom of his skull, but it pops into his head sometimes nonetheless. It tastes bitter, and he knows better than to hold that against him, the sometimes-there figure of a man who he’s supposed to consider father. The revered, mythical pilot who performs feats of unimaginable calibre and yet can’t help himself from arbitrating his son who doesn’t quite square up. Ben is not a pilot, nor a smuggler. He struggles with lying, and his wit leaves something to be desired. His mother, ever the mediator, always claimed it was because Ben reminded him of her. He could never negate it; to do so would insult his mother, and she knew this. Even as Ben proved that he was very unlike his mother.

He enjoyed visits from Leia; she always brought presents. Luke would frown his disapproval, Jedi weren’t supposed to have material possessions if they could help it, but always looked the other way. His collection of trinkets grew steadily; a piece of igneous rock, an old necklace she had lying around, a tool she had forgotten how to use, a puzzle from a distant planet, a map of an ancient civilisation still stained with the blood of the last slain members. They ranged from pointless to priceless, but he accepted them all the same, offering his perfunctory kiss on the cheek in return. She would giggle like a girl, which infuriatingly never ceased to make him blush. She did it on purpose, he knew, and told himself he indulged her like any diligent son would his doting mother. The truth of it was he never could learn to control the capillaries in his cheeks, no amount of meditation would allow for it. He vehemently refused to admit that he waited for the next incoming holo call announcing her spontaneous visit, but deep in the most wretchedly sentimental part of himself he could not deny it as fact. He was struggling, lonely. 

He didn’t tell Luke about the voices because he knew it meant they would no longer speak to him. 

He kept them for himself, his confidantes. They seeped into his mind and took from him what he offered with only slight hesitation. The few memories of Han Solo, his acclaimed progenitor, were twisted into darkness and shame. He could no longer visit them without stirring the heavy pit which had taken root in his stomach, producing thorns which prodded him from the inside out. How could he give them up? They were a part of him. They had driven him so far, pushed him to greatness. He must owe his progress to them. 

It is they who first warn him of her.

An ordinary run to the borders of their training base; Artoo has been running less than smoothly, and so a call for spare parts has been issued. The transporter is utterly pedestrian, he has seen a thousand more like it just as rust-eaten and ill-cared for. He resents being brought along on such pointless ‘missions’. Luke has warned him that not every task is a call for glory, but collecting spare droid parts and haggling with a merchant whose sole company is deactivated droids is surely beneath even an apprentice. Luke had given him that look of disapproval and, even more maddeningly, hope – as if he believes that Ben will grow up, do the right thing. He grumbles his submission if only to avoid looking at his face any longer. He regrets agreeing even more with knowledge of what they were to discover alongside the dusty old droids. 

He feels it as soon as they arrive; a strange gnawing sensation, a buzz in his temple. The voices murmur among themselves, a word of warning. He finds himself walking slower, his gaze sweeping the vicinity for threats. Luke is apparently unaffected. He tampers his unease, forcing his hands to unclench, but his jaw is locked rigid. They meet the pilot who asks them for a moment to smoke – his journey was long from the barren planet Jakku. Luke graciously allows him a few minutes, and they retreat to the platform control room. Luke speaks of the fine weather, of how hot it feels away from the fresh water which flows in abundance at their base. Ben fires off an off-hand comment on the self-control of a Jedi and Luke laughs as if he has told a joke. Ben feels the humidity, too, of course. But it is not just the overcast day which has him on edge. 

They return to the pilot, and as they near the transporter Ben feels as though an alarm is sounding in his head. He looks past the ship into the recesses of uncharted jungle, and his eyes are drawn to a particular cluster of leaves overhanging from a nearby bush. It is as if he has infrared vision; that spot would be on fire if it were the case. He can hardly look away, as common as the sight is. There hasn’t even been suspicious movement to catch his eye. The treeline sways as it always does, bending to the will of the breeze. If it were not for his dark friends, he doubts he would have detected her at all. It is when he uses the Force – a miniscule amount by any measure, he is sure, that it begins. A foreign pain in his temple, sharp enough to give him pause, short enough that he is listening for the small gasp emanating from the hotspot. He reacts quickly – this is what he has been trained to do. His training saber is drawn and pointed at the unknown threat before anyone else has moved. Luke is not far behind, a clammy hand pushing his saber down and away. Ever the pacifist. 

She is revealed like something in a dream, a dramatic drawing back of the curtain. She’s slim, lithe, like a jungle cat. Young, younger than Ben. Afraid. Alone. 

“What’s your name?” Luke asks, a kindly figure. She locks onto him immediately. 

“Rey. Just Rey. I’m… Rey.” Her voice is strong, unwavering, even as she shakes with the jungle. 

“How did you get here?” Luke begins enquiries organically; Ben has already begun to trace the edges of her mind with the Force. Her eyes flicker to him, questioning, and he is surprised at her sensitivity. He had thought he was too gentle for detection. 

He receives a series of images; the desert planet Jakku, an abandoned AT-AT, the solemn eyes of a deactivated droid, and the last, most powerful image of himself. He is framed, dark and terrible, by the beautiful nurturing foliage of the planet. The image is tainted with fear, confusion. The voices in his head are mysteriously silent, as if considering, in the moment when he needs their guidance the most. 

“I came from Jakku. I don’t know this place. I need help.” She is forthright to a fault, and Ben can see Luke changing tact. He loses the kindly uncle character, shrugging on a more official stance in response to her needs. 

“If you come with us, we can help you. We have a base not far from here. We can give you food, clothes… answers.” He lets the last word hang, tantalising fruit. Her chin is stained red, and yet she reaches for it. 

“I’ll come. Please.” It is an afterthought, the intrusion of manners. Ben sheaths his saber, stands upright, and walks back to their own shuttle. He knows Luke will follow with the girl. 

Thus begins Ben’s ordeal. The young Rey is unconventional in many respects; abandoned at a young age on a barren planet, yet fluent in at least 7 galactic languages. Untrained in skilled fighting, yet an indomitable opponent in the sparring ring. Incredibly sensitive to the Force, but infuriatingly obtuse to social interaction. Iridescent, positively glowing in the centre of a large gathering of people, but searingly focussed while alone. Not that Ben noticed her in particular. He was too busy with matters of importance, like decoding through his mother’s cryptic behaviour that she and Han were spending less and less time together. How Han visited his son even less than Leia, with months – even years, on one memorable occasion – passing between appearances. They were always brief, yet simultaneously unbearably long. He found himself longing to see the familiar circular shape of the Falcon drift into port, and hating himself for waiting. The sharp feeling of happiness when he seldom did see his father was quickly quashed by their first few minutes of conversation. Ben fast realised that his father had little interest in the ways of the Force, but worse still that he had no respect for it. It was voodoo magic, a heathen religion in his opinion. What could he learn from the Force that he had not already learned through hard work on his ship?

Ben’s entire life was dictated by the Force. He loved the power which it flowed through him, the feeling of fullness far more satisfying than after any meal. The secrets which it unlocked, the abilities it gifted. It was unthinkable that his father should think less of him for having applied himself to such an art form, rather than traipsing around the galaxy in an illegally modified smuggling ship causing trouble, and yet Ben felt it every time his father looked at him. He could tell he did not quite square up to his father’s expectations. It might have hurt when he was younger, and even quieter then than now, but he used it as a strength as he got older. He welcomed the tight feeling in his chest, because he knew that the Force would curl around the knot to soothe it with deep whispers in languages he did not need to understand. 

He was ill-prepared for when his father took a shine to Rey, the stow-away apprentice. To describe it he might call it a betrayal on both their parts. It was one of the few moments in his life when he felt truly helpless; helpless to stop the bond, unable to logically keep them apart without revealing the deep well of his bitterness. Helpless against feeling, irrevocably, replaced.


	4. The Task

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I hope everyone had a good holiday period whatever you may or may not celebrate. This chapter is super long compared to others I’ve written, so I hope you enjoy it! This chapter is really where I’ve tried to set the scene for what you’re all expecting to happen ;) so I’ve included reference to some original characters and some who I have plucked from wookiepedia! 
> 
> I love comments, kudos, and feedback of all kinds! I’m kind of an attention whore ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Rey is running through the jungle, feet and heart pounding, both pursued and in pursuit.

The day had started as any other, when Luke had led the trailing apprentices outside the classroom into the sunshine. Rey heard a small groan run through the group as he explained the task he had set them - a race, and the finish line was a point farther away from the base than any of them had ventured before. The use of maps was mandatory. Only a single victor would be crowned, Luke explained, but the route which they had to travel required the effort of a team. Facing confused apprentices, he elaborated. 

“There are several rivers which cut across this route; most are easily passable, but others become impossible to cross alone. You may find it useful to ally yourself with your fellow apprentices, but you must always be aware that the final part of this challenge is completed single-handedly.”

There was a pause as they absorbed this information. An apprentice called out, a young Twi-lek.

“Is this an exercise in trust? You are orchestrating betrayal.” 

Luke nodded serenely, a smile playing at his lips as though he were pleased to be called out.

“It is an exercise in many things, one of them indeed being trust. You may, in your lifetime as Jedi Knights, be forced into a situation in which trust is hard to achieve. Where trust must be forced. This is a difficult truth, but it is truth nonetheless. You are all of you capable of being the victor, of this I have no doubt. What I am interested to observe in this challenge is who among you are willing to sacrifice.”

_Sacrifice_. A heavy word for a relatively simple task. Rey found her breath catch at the word, even as she prepared herself mentally for the challenge. She knew instinctually the group of 13 would split in two, as there were groups within their order which existed invisibly; those who began Jedi training at an early age, hailing from prominent families, and those like Rey, who were borne from struggle and hardship, for whom the Jedi order was a haven and not a birthright. She counted them in her head, those like herself, and found herself on a team of 4 against 9. They parted easily, the 9 noble apprentices falling together immediately, leaving the stragglers behind. Rey beckoned them. They understood something the other apprentices would not: true hardship. Rey herself was not inclined to speak of her past freely among her peers, though the flow of information during training was not always under her control. As much as she gave, she took. She knew that two apprentices on her team, the Nautolan twins, were outcasts from their amphibious society due to the circumstances of their hatching. Sharing an egg broke the purity of the birthing process, and twins were exceptionally rare in their tribe, as well as supposed harbingers of bad luck. Both tall, agile swimmers, with the same eerie shade of green for their skin, they were swept into the Jedi order as teens, incredibly co-dependent and reluctant to engage with anyone outside of themselves. Terenn and Zon were their names if Rey was remembering correctly. Both heralded Luke as a saint-like figure. 

The 4th member of their reluctant team was the outspoken Twi-lek, Ivi. Her full name was longer, but she was content to be called the nickname for ease. Another independent outcast, Rey recalled with some exasperation. She had a quick mouth for those she did not regard as having authority over her, which was most people aside from Luke and the older apprentices. Rey knew she would automatically attempt to assume command of their rag-tag crew, and resigned herself to allow it. The twins would fall into line behind her, if only because Luke asked it of them. 

He looked over at the two group’s wildly different sizes as if he had been expecting it. _He probably was_ , Rey thought with a huff. 

“Have we prepared?” He asked after a minute’s intense debate by the nobles, and a minute’s tense silence between Rey’s 4. “Then, you have your target. Begin.”

Instantly Rey felt the gentle touch of Luke’s mind to hers, the contact an offering. He left an image at the outskirts of her mind, as Rey assumed he had all of them, of the ruins of a temple deep in the jungles of Yavin. Rey wasn’t familiar with it. Already Ivi was plucking her map from among her supplies and hunting for the location. The sad-eyed Nautolans with their large, expressive black eyes linked hands and said nothing. Not for the first time, Rey suspected a telepathic link between them entirely separate from the Force. She checked her own sack of supplies, glad that she’d packed her training saber. She had a feeling she would need to use it. Ivi’s head snapped up from where she was engrossed in the map. 

“I have the location. It’s 5 miles in that direction.” She nodded towards the east section of the jungle. “Keep close.”

She strode off, barely allowing Rey and the Nautolans chance to keep up. Rey jogged a few steps until she was shoulder to shoulder with the height-advantaged Twi-lek. 

“You’re sure you have the correct temple?” Rey asked her, attempting to sound official. Ivi barely restrained her exasperation. 

“Yes, I’m certain. Just keep close and wait for the rivers.”

The rivers. Ivi was already expecting Rey to sacrifice herself. Unexpectedly, she thought of Han, and how he dealt in deception for a living. Though an older man now, with grey around his temples and heavy lines beneath his eyes, Rey understood Han as a master of manipulation, though never with her. He was always refreshingly blunt with her. She considered him, and what he might do if forced to work with Ivi as Rey is. Certainly, Rey knew, he wouldn’t allow her to act so flippantly towards him. She thought of Chewie then, the oft-misunderstand Wookie. She looked back to the twins, who were a few paces behind them. She left Ivi to take charge, acting on impulse as she fell into step alongside Terenn and Zon. Time to hatch a plan. 

“Hi guys,” she began, pathetic even to herself, “are you okay?”

Eerily in sync, they looked impassively over at her as one and continued walking. She changed tact, reaching out with the Force to ascertain their language. When she repeated her question, this time in Nautila, she relished their surprise. _Finally_ , she thought, _I’m getting somewhere._

***

The first of the rivers was more like a large stream, and relatively shallow. Ivi wasted no time in wading in up to her waist, and Rey followed suit while the twins submerged themselves completely. The twins beat Ivi to the other side even with her head start, and Rey smirked from where she couldn’t see her. 

_Tut-tut_ , she heard the familiar deep voice in her head admonish her, and she startled. It was unlike Ben to use Force-speak lightly, and even more unlike him to deign to speak to Rey. She felt him roughly sift through her thoughts, finding her plan with the twins easily. She felt the echo of him being impressed. _This is below your usual standards._

_Shut up,_ she retorted angrily, growing even more irritated at Ben’s amusement at her expense. _Why are you distracting me? Don’t you have more important apprentice things to be doing._

_You were thinking too loud_ , he countered easily, _so I think you’ll find you were disturbing me._

Rey knew then what had caught his attention. He had always been exceptionally sensitive to mentions of his father, and she was broadcasting her thoughts about the Nautolans for all the world to hear. Except, only Ben heard. Because Ben was a powerful Force user, and a deeply introspective character. Rey was certain he knew the inside of her head better than her face. 

_And that’s the way I like it,_ he deadpanned, catching the tail end of her thought. 

_What do you think then_ , Rey asked, glibly ignoring his comment, _will it work?_

_We shall see._

Rey cursed inwardly, throwing up a hasty shield to her thoughts. A spectator. He must be meditating, or pretending to be, to intrude on her consciousness for so long uninterrupted. Rey caught the vindictive edge to his last message, as if Ben was hoping for her to fail. 

_Brilliant_ , she said, throwing open her mind again. _Hang on tight._

_I’m on the edge of my seat_ , he said, before retreating enough into his mind that he could see, but not necessarily feel or speak about, what was happening in Rey’s perspective. She was grateful that he had allowed her this much privacy - even as a recalcitrant Jedi, he knew better than to interfere with a young apprentice’s training. 

***

Ben is absent from her head as she runs, breathless, to keep up with the twins in the river. They are swimming slowly for their own standards, but Rey is hard-pressed to keep up. Pursued and in pursuit. 

They abandoned Ivi at the last river, leaving her stranded on the other side while the twins buoyed Rey across in an undignified but effective manner. The receding figure of her rescinding into the jungle as they surged onwards was indecently satisfying. 

They are racing along the river towards the temple, Rey having manipulated the location from Ivi a half hour ago. As soon as she had that information, Ivi was expendable. The twins had agreed it was a non-issue that she be left behind at the next viable opportunity. Rey is throwing out webs of Force detection as they sprint, trying to ascertain the location of the remaining 9 in play. Either they are too far away to be detected and so have made a fatal error, or they all have their mental shields up. Rey disappointedly expects the latter. Her lungs burn and her legs ache as she plows through the jungle underbrush, shouting every expletive in every language she knows to combat the pain. It does little to stem it. There is a break in the tree line ahead, and the twins eagerly announce in Rey’s head that that must be the temple clearing. Rey’s relief is almost embarrassing. 

They run, almost victorious, within an arms length of the clearing, when Ben explodes into Rey’s head, stopping her dead in her tracks. 

_STOP._

Rey, too shocked for words, reaches back with confusion, a tentatively unspoken question. She has fallen to the jungle floor, but she barely feels it. 

_Rey, do not go any further._

_The twins_ , is all she can say. Unencumbered by a phantom scream, they continue ahead into the clearing. Ben’s horror is palpable. _What’s going on?_

_Luke has had half the academy out looking for you. You’re in the wrong place - that clearing is towards a Sith temple. It dampens Force communication. It isn’t safe._

_How are you communicating with me now?_

Rey doesn’t mean the question to appear so accusatory, but her thoughts are fluttering. She reaches for the twins with the Force, but receives radio silence. Ben is moody when he speaks again. 

_You are aware I’m an exceptionally powerful Force-speaker._

_Of course_ , Rey agrees if only to repurpose the conversation, _what about the twins? I can’t reach them with the Force. Can you try?_

He is silent as he concentrates. Rey sits upright on the jungle floor, panting heavily into the unearthly quiet, unable to look away from the tree line. Finally, he returns. 

_Rey, you need to find Luke._

_The twins? What about Terenn and Zon?_

_Find Luke_ , he repeats forcefully, and Rey knows he is keeping something from her. She rummages in her sack, finds her training saber, and ignites it. It’s gentle hum is not as comforting as she had hoped against the great impenetrable cloud of nothing sitting a few feet away from her. 

_Ben? You’re gonna hate me for this. I’m going after them. If I don’t come back, tell Han and Luke I’m sorry._

She throws her mental shields up before he can reply, and shakily gets to her feet. Her heart is going into overdrive, the engine of her body overheated, overtired. It is inadvisable that she engage in a battle scenario. Putting one foot in front of the other, she staggers towards the clearing. 

She bursts into sudden sunlight, the heavy cloud parting as if intending to form the halo of light. It is, as Ben said, a temple. Not the temple Luke had shown them what seemed like eons ago now. This has... presence. The mud bricks which form the building should be crumbling, overrun with flora and the jungle animals. But the temple looks as if it could have been built yesterday. Rey forces herself to focus. She scans the area, sick to her stomach, searching fruitlessly for the twins. When she reaches for the Force instinctively, she is surprised to find that now she is beneath the umbrella of the temple’s field it acts as a magnifier for her powers. She can feel the twins now. Her questions in Force speak go unanswered. She feels, inexplicably, angry. _Furious_. How could they ignore her? How could they force her to venture to this place which feels wrong and pulsates with dark energy? As quickly as the feeling takes hold of her, it lets go. _Dark energy_ , Rey identifies it, suddenly. Luke had warned them of its seduction, but actually feeling its effects is breathtaking. The emotions had felt like her own, but they were undeniably false. Rey had chosen to follow the twins out of her own free will. She replaces her shields with grim determination, and heads towards the temple.

Inside the temple the feeling of wrongness is stronger.

It consists of a single room with high ceilings, and a skylight gives the place a single piece of high-key lighting, while the walls and corners are shrouded in shadow. Rey hurries into the centre of the room. The twins kneel before an altar against the far wall, their heads bowed. Rey can just hear them murmuring words in a language she doesn’t recognise. Not a good sign. Her saber, still ignited, hums as she moves it before her, cautiously entering a fighting stance. 

“Hello?” She calls to them in Nautolan. 

“Can you see them?” The twins ask as one, returning to their native language to speak to Rey. There is no one else there but them.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about...”

“ _Weak_ ,” they spit, “they have not chosen you. The Light calls too strongly, they cannot be heard above it.”

The Light feels very far away in the jungle temple, and Rey aches to be anywhere else, back at the base with Luke and her friends. With a pang, she realises even Jakku had not felt this desolate.

“Zon,” she calls, “you would allow your sister to remain here? It isn’t safe.”

“They protect us,” they still speak as one voice. 

“Terren? You can’t believe that? There’s no one here but us. It’s an illusion.”

Terren turns away from the altar to sneer at Rey, only for a second, but the dark power lurking in her gaze sends prickles of fear down her spine. 

“You will both die if you stay here. I’m trying to help you-“

“Help!” They cry, “we need not your help, Jedi. Your path of Light is weakness and stagnation. They have shown us a better way.”

Rey opens her mouth to argue, growing desperate, but she interrupted by a deafening crash. The roof of the temple caves in as a T-6 shuttle ploughs through. Rey leaps to the side to avoid being crushed by falling rocks as the twins, now fully distracted from their activity, turn to face the new threat. Rey reels, crouched in defence of herself, her saber still shining before her. She is in disbelief of what is inside the cockpit of the shuttle. 

There is a hissing sound as the cockpit opens, and Ben Solo emerges, his saber ignited. 

For a moment, all Rey can do is stare. Backlit by the sun, his saber a glorious azure blue, he looks like a Jedi Knight. The vision is broken by his expression. If thunderclouds had faces, Ben Solo is performing an excellent impression. He looks over at her from the twins, and it immediately darkens. Rey feels a shiver run down her spine. She has never witnessed such anger. The twins appear unaffected, rising to their feet and each holding out a hand towards Ben. The effect is so strong even Rey can feel the residual power as they attempt to strangle him with the Force. He is too fast. His saber glints and flashes and he moves towards the twins, and for a terrible second Rey has a vision of him slaughtering them, unarmed and clearly under someone else’s control. His saber dims when he is within touching distance of them, however, and Rey releases a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. The twins are barely aware he’s standing in front of them, their faces turned away, to some invisible speaker. Ben looks to where they are listening, and Rey wonders if he sees something there too. She staggers to her feet. Without even a cursory glance, Ben knocks her back down again with the Force. She is indignant, even though the message is clear; _I’ll deal with you later._

Ben speaks, finally, but the relief Rey feels is short-lived. He speaks in the tongue of the twins, the black language she cannot understand. The twins appear to listen to him. 

“Ben!” Rey calls, terrified. He does not respond. “ _Ben!_ ”

She is embarrassed by herself, by how foolish she is, even as she screams his name. If she were a thousand miles away he would hear her better. She scrambles for her saber, wiping away angry tears, and gets to her feet again. This time he does not react. She moves closer, and still nothing. The Dark Side is all around them, a living thing, constricting slowly like a snake. She cannot allow them to be taken. This has gone too far. 

She clicks off her saber, suddenly wearier than she has ever felt. She realises what she must do. 

She moves closer, listens to them speak. Her eyes slide closed as she finally drops her mental shields. The darkness floods her immediately, slithering inside her head and coiling around her thoughts, choking her. When her eyes open again, she can see the figure at the heart of this disaster. She is young, human. Rey doesn’t recognise her, but her name drips from her tongue like molten metal. Darth Zannah. She would look almost ordinary, were it not for her yellow ochre eyes. They regard one another for a moment. 

“Take me.” Rey commands her, pleads with her. 

“They are stronger,” she counters. 

“Look again,” Rey asks, “I am all you need.”

And Rey opens herself, all the dark thoughts she has shut away over the years, the loneliness, the waiting, wondering if she was worth it. Zannah drinks her in greedily, and forces more from her - how she is frightened of her own anger, afraid to fight for fear that she’ll never stop. It seems to satisfy her.

“My conditions,” she reminds her, and Zannah rolls her eyes. It seems a strange thing for the ghost of a Sith Lord to do. 

She raises a hand, and Ben blinks as if seeing for the first time. The twins visibly recoil. As Zannah moves closer to Rey, Ben appears to realise what she has done. It’s too late, but he lunges towards Zannah, who throws him off as easily as a cape, sending him crashing into the far wall. Her eyes are fixed on Rey, gleaming yellow. 

“You remind me of myself, you know.” At Rey’s thinly-veiled disgust, rooted as she is to the spot, helpless to stop the flow of energy, she chuckles. 

She reaches inside her defenceless mind, and twists. Rey feels as if she is outside of her body, watching herself as she screams. The last thing she sees before succumbing to darkness is the unearthly glow of a blue lightsaber. 

***

Rey wakes up in her room on Yavin with the worst headache of her life. The lights are too bright overhead, as if she had fallen asleep in the sun. Everything aches. She feels as if she has aged 50 years overnight. 

She sits up with difficulty, biting back the groan which threatens as her spine pops and creaks. Sitting in a chair next to her bed, his face a mask of general displeasure, is Ben Solo. 

“Good morning,” he rumbles, his own voice thick with exhaustion. Rey can only blink at him for a moment, wondering why in stars’ end Ben Solo would be required to watch her sleep, before her memory catches up with her and she gasps aloud. 

“What in the universe happened,” she croaks, a little too loudly for the silent room. Her throat feels like sandpaper. How long has she been asleep?

“You were an idiot. I’m sure that’s not a surprise to you.” 

It wasn’t, but she resents his tone.

“Switch off, you oaf, what the hell happened?”

His face darkens, all joviality disappearing. Rey instantly fears the worst. Ben, seeing her face fall, rushes to correct himself. 

“The twins are fine. Master Luke is working with them on eradicating the traces of sith energy...” he pauses, takes a breath, “is there anyone else in your head, Rey? Can you still hear Zannah?”

Rey doesn’t answer straight away. There’s a look on Ben’s face which gives her pause; she had seen those eyes briefly colour yellow, a terrible vision she isn’t sure was real or a dream cooked up by her unconscious mind. His eyes now are calm, enveloping brown, achingly sincere and hiding hope. 

“It’s just me. I’m all alone in here.” Rey winces smilingly at her unintended quip. Ben pretends not to understand. 

“Good. I’ll go get Master Luke. He wanted to speak with you as soon as you were awake.” 

“Wait, Ben,” she stops him unthinkingly, blurting her sentence before she loses her nerve, “in the temple, you seemed angry with me.”

He halts from where he clearly intended to march off in that severe way of his. He looks back at her, and it’s like watching a switch flick. All at once, he shutters himself. His eyes become unfathomable, endless. Like looking into a mirror. When he speaks, he’s fighting something. 

“I don’t know what you’re referring to. I’ll get Master Luke. He’ll answer your questions if you’re confused.”

He’s gone, like he was never there at all. It only takes a few minutes for Luke to walk into her room, looking severely cowed. 

“Rey,” he looks over her, brightening to see her awake and alert. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” she smiles, “how are the twins? Ben mentioned you were working with them.”

“They had me worried; you all did, actually. I should have known that my apprentices are magnets for trouble. I’ll be keeping a much closer eye on you all from now on.”

“Luke...” she begins, but isn’t sure what she has to say. Luke leans forward, his brow falling into that heavy concerned furrow. “In the temple, Ben seemed to know everything before it happened. He knew it was a sith temple, and... I saw the dark side take him. I’m worried.”

Luke, while not overjoyed, does not appear surprised by the information. “I have suspected for some time that Ben has been troubled. I had hoped he would seek solace from me on his own terms, for I cannot know what goes on in his mind. He would never forgive me if I pried.”

Rey sees Luke change from a master to an uncle, concerned for his nephew under his care. He’s unsure, and it’s unsettling to witness. Rey has always seen Luke as secure in his beliefs and in his methods. She puts a hand on his forearm, an instinctive act of comfort. She remembers when Luke was the biggest thing in her world, her saviour and master, her father, brother, friend and even at times her greatest adversary. It isn’t as if he has shrunk since then, but more as if other people have swelled to match him in size. Her world has grown around them. She wonders where Ben fits in, among the smugglers, Jedi masters, and everyone in between.


	5. The Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kind of came out of nowhere, for me. It’s bittersweet, but I think it sets us nicely in motion for things to come. Jealous Ben Solo mixed with gentle Ben Solo is my favourite kind of characterisation of my little emo child, so enjoy this small slice of almost-domesticity. 
> 
> I’ve included in this chapter another original character who as I wrote her I fell in love with, so we might expect her to crop back up as and when I feel like Ben needs taking down a peg or two, which is always.
> 
> Kudos, comments, and feedback are, as ever, gratefully received!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, i finally got around to seeing The Last Jedi, and I am happy to report that overall I enjoyed it immensely. This fic will remain spoiler-free and canon-divergent, however, for those of us who like me are slow to catch up with franchise instalments.

When he goes to sleep, they sing him into slumber. When he wakes up, before he has even opened his eyes, they are there to greet him good morning. 

When he brings his ship crashing down through the roof of an ancient sith temple, they mutter among themselves, talking about _her_ always _her_ , the one who has the twins so easily won over, and Rey still fighting, a fish on the hook. He quashes the flare of pride in his chest; she is stubborn, that’s all. Stubborn enough to embark on a fool’s rescue mission after a pair of apprentices she barely knows. Stubborn enough to look the ghost of a Sith Lord in the eye and not be immediately swayed.

Not like Ben, who is weak, has always been weak, and is exposed in the too-hot temple for what he truly is. A coward. 

He could blame Rey, if he wanted to. It was her, after all, who was the reason he was there at all. It was she who fanned the flames of his temper into a roaring blaze, her damned recklessness, her foolhardy assurance that even if she were to fail, _he_ would come to save her, to finish the mission. He was angry because she was right. She is always right.

He looks into the eyes of Zannah and sees greed, the desire to consume and gain. In his head, they whisper encouragement. With her, they tell him, he would not need to be weak. He could leave behind his past, reclaim his future, make it his own. Zannah promises him strength; all it costs is his soul. It’s too easy, in the end, to simply relinquish control. He was angry, has been angry for so long - Zannah matches his anger in her ambition. She knows what it is to be used, to feel trapped by one’s past. The sith had pushed her to greatness, and she promises the same for him. 

He is aware all along of Rey’s peripheral hurt and confusion, but she sounds faraway, like the residue of a dream encounter. He knew better than to be sucked in by visions and heady dreams. 

When Rey offers herself, and he is cast aside, he recognises the feeling which blooms in his chest. He has felt it before, long ago, this kind of ripping sensation through his centre. He was younger then, and so was Rey, sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, in _his_ seat. His father watching her with wonder in his eyes, so impressed. Even then, as a feral scrap of a thing, she was better than he. He’s watched her ever since, trying to see what might have made his father so enamoured of her. What did she have that he didn’t? She was a powerful force user, he had sensed that immediately. Her sway with language was second to none. Her fingers sought to understand everything they touched, and they sought to touch everything. There were at least 15 just like her, all just as hopeful. Yet he couldn’t deny that something existed within her, some magnetised entity which naturally drew in people around her. Supposedly a native of Jakku, whatever barren roots she had grown flourished into colour and life on Yavin. 

It was natural that even Zannah, possessed of darkness which Ben could see none of in Rey, would seek her over him as well. 

He wakes on the temple floor to Luke’s concern, his pain bright in his eyes. He wakes with silence in his head, a gnawing emptiness where once had been full. It aches, unexpectedly. He doesn’t tell Luke. He pushes away the hands which touch his arms, his shoulder, his forehead, and walks to where Rey lays asleep, whether collapsed in exhaustion or held in a state of unconsciousness by Luke. Her forehead is furrowed, her eyelids a-flutter, and pieces of flyaway hair stick to her face as if she has a fever. He reaches for her without thinking, his arms scooping under her neck and knees to carry her back to the base. He will walk all 5 miles if he has to, but Luke beckons him towards his cruiser, mistaking his actions for kindness and concern. He smiles, a small, hopeful smile as Ben sets Rey down in the passenger seat with what might have been mistaken as tenderness. It is not. He is using this opportunity to study her. Even in sleep he feels her pull. It’s a visceral need to be close to her, to help. It tastes wrong in his mouth, sits wrong in his stomach. In the back of the cruiser, even then watching the wind disrupt her hair from its customary tri-bun style, his face heats with the pressure of these feelings which he cannot process. 

When Luke takes her to the medical bay, Ben follows him, feeling foolish but unable to stop his legs from automatically trailing after them. Luke makes no comment, but even with the weight of the day’s failure upon his shoulders, he understatedly glows. When the healer on duty, a Knight named Ares, has cleared her for bed rest, he volunteers to take her back to her room. Shockingly, they let him. Luke leaves to tend to the other apprentices caught in the mess as only his pre-eminent calm can, and walking slowly to the apprentices sleeping cells, finds himself oddly content.

He enjoys her weight in his arms. It is different from using the force to carry her. She radiates heat against him, and he finds his breath matches her steady respiration as he sets her down on the bed. He’s curious about her room, and looks about the small space with a focused eye. Ben has lived in the same room ever since he arrived at the academy, and it is a fair size larger than Rey’s pod. The far wall is fully glass with a view over the lake and opposing forest, and as the light outside dims with the onset of nightfall Ben brings the shutters down with the Force. The space feels intimate now, with the removal of opportunity for prying eyes. Ben realises he can do anything, but all he wants to do is nothing. The quiet in his head is oppressive now, a palpable absence. He wonders if he’ll ever hear those voices again. Just another thing to blame on Rey. She settles more soundly into her natural sleeping position, foetal, with her arms crossed protectively over her chest, her shallow breathes just visible at the hollow of her throat. Ben has to leave then, and he forces himself away before he does something he’ll regret. He’ll be back, though. He feels it as surely as he remembers the feeling of holding her. 

***

 

Things change after Rey wakes up. They don’t revert back to before what everyone now calls ‘the incident’. It’s a new version of normal, and Ben finds himself settling into the quiet of his head in the days following. 

That is, until Han Solo shows up unannounced on one of his visits, and Ben is reminded once again why he ignores his mother’s urges to holo call his father from time to time. 

Luke has sent word to Leia of the incident, and Leia must have brow-beaten Han into making a stop on Yavin in between his scheduled smuggling trips. It’s why he appears so unsure in the hangar of the academy, talking to Luke about one of his jobs while Luke listens politely. When Ben steps forth from around the corner, Han struggles to meet his eyes. 

“Ben,” he says, “didn’t see you there. How’s things?”

“Not too bad, considering a sith ghost almost turned two apprentices three days ago.” Ben leaves out the part where the ghost also turned him. Han chuckles, a nervous sound. Luke suppresses a sigh with great mental effort. 

“Listen, son, there’s no need to be so hostile. I came as soon as I heard.” 

His mother had holo-called within two hours of him leaving Rey, fretting and threatening to move the entire base to another quadrant, this time fully-vetted for sith temples and dormant ghosts of the Sith Lords who frequented them. Ben had chastened her with his best impression of Luke; that we must all come into contact with the dark side at some point, it would be worse to never experience it, it was a learning experience, nobody was irreversibly affected, etc. Displeased, but agreeable, Leia had instructed him to eat more, and rushed off to answer an urgent message from the senate. He had left the call feeling, in spite of himself, better. 

This was not like that call. 

He opens his mouth to say something biting, when the sound of running feet echo behind him, and Rey hurls herself at Han past Ben. He is startled into silence. Han automatically catches her, stumbling and laughing all at once. 

“Kid!” He says, “how you been? Heard you ran into a spot of trouble these past couple days.”

“Ah, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.” Rey winks, _winks_ at him. She is positively glowing, and all hesitancy has left Han. 

“I’m sure,” he smiles, “I got a new concussion shield generator; wanna take a look?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Rey finds the release hold for the cargo door entrance and pushes. The entrance descends smoothly, and Rey gestures for Han to lead her aboard. Luke chooses that moment to retreat, leaving Ben with a look of sympathy which he stoically ignores. His nails crush into his palms where his hands are fisted by his sides. He turns and stalks away, the sound of Rey’s animated chatter echoing behind him. 

He heads to the only place he goes when this feeling envelopes him; the sparring wing. 

The wing is simple, a large open space with high ceilings and reinforced walls and flooring. A few pieces of equipment line the walls - mainly weights used for honing focus and skill with Force levitation. It’s empty when Ben stalks coldly in, closing and barring the door behind him. There is nothing in his mind, no flutter of a second pair of phantom eyes watching his every movement. He misses it. There were times he felt his uninvited visitor was the only person who truly appreciated him, and their sudden absence was a loss keenly felt. Now more alone than ever, his mind fills with repeating images of Rey and Han, their easy cadence, more so father and child than he could ever hope to attain. He could never make his father smile like that. 

His saber is suddenly in his hand, looking for something to obliterate. He curses Luke’s minimalist teaching style - he needs something visceral to sink his saber into so that he’s no longer the only fractured thing he can feel. 

Behind him, the door slides open despite his having locked it. He knows who it is without having to turn around, and relief floods through him. 

“I assume you’re here because of our unexpected visitor,” Aleric Gram speaks, a recruit from Koros Major. 

“I can’t be dedicated to my studies?” Ben counters, finally turning. She already has her training saber drawn, her face it’s usual litany of crass sarcasm. 

“Not since I’ve known you, Ben Solo.” She’s already tensed, expecting an engagement from him at any moment. Now that he’s been assured what he wants, he’s inclined to make the impatient apprentice wait. 

“You haven’t really known me that long.”

“Or at all, really,” she agrees, a quick smirk appearing and disappearing. She shifts on her toes, impatient. 

“Perhaps that’s because every time you see me, you attack me.”

“Well,” she says, finally beginning to advance after realising Ben isn’t going to, “I can’t help it. I see your face, and I just have to - hit it.”

She darts forward, then, slicing a horizontal arc and forcing Ben to skid backwards a few steps. He lazily deflects her saber with his own, the sizzle upon contact delicious to hear. 

“Not very Jedi-like of you,” Ben says, barely aware of the conversation at all. He’s watching her movements as she circles him, her careful footing fairly distracting. Aleric is a notoriously frenetic fighter, unable to hold still for any length of time. It makes her harder to read, but perfect for Ben’s purposes in sparring today.

Ben takes two quick steps forward, aiming his saber in an obvious lunge, easily parried, before sliding his saber along the length of Aleric’s until they are hilt to hilt. He kicks out with his feet, sweeping her left leg to off-balance her, but she stumbles smartly, keeping her limbs tight and her saber outstretched. She hates it when Ben fights dirty. She rebounds with three sustained attacks, each one landing a little closer to flesh and bone, and _now_ he’s gotten what he wants. He twirls into a reverse-strike, sending an elbow into her solar plexus and singeing a piece of her hair. He relishes the soft wheeze, followed by the resentful tut as the smell of burnt hair surrounds them. She moves faster now, aiming darting blows and keeping a safe distance between them. Ben has no time for safe. He slashes his saber down across her own with all of his strength, pinning her as he closes the distance between them. Her eyes flash with annoyance at his antics forcing her into close combat, and her blows have more bite in them when she unleashes a flurry. She catches him slightly on the corner of his jaw with her saber, but he doesn’t flinch at the burning sensation. She doesn’t apologise, and he’s never felt more grateful. 

They speak with actions, with their bodies, Ben’s frustrations with his father bleeding into every strike, and Aleric’s desperate need to prove herself an equal to him showing with every practised tilt of her wrist and expert nudge with the Force. He’s impressed in spite of himself, though he could never allow her to best him. It feels like minutes, but they are drenched in sweat, moving sluggishly by the time Aleric yields finally. Flicking off her saber, she collapses to the ground, cursing Ben under her breath. Ben for his part feels much improved, even with his hair plastered to his forehead and his shoulders aching from exertion.

“I’m inclined to give Han Solo a piece of my mind, you know,” she jokes from where she lies prostrated on the floor. “He’s to blame for all my suffering.”

“Get in line,” Ben replies curtly, a quicksilver smile sprouting on his face. His jaw is beginning to grow tight from the burn there.

“I wonder what he sees in her,” Aleric continues, swimming into ever more deadly waters with her runaway mouth. “I mean, a desert rat from Jakku, practically begging to be turned, and because she’s quick with a data pad suddenly she’s Han Solo’s prodigy?”

Something in Ben twists uncomfortably. 

“She’s so transparent. The Light shines in her so brightly sometimes I can’t even stand to look at her.”

 _Like the sun_ , Ben agrees privately. His mouth remains shuttered. 

“It’s especially sad, considering everyone knows you have a terrible soft spot for the mite.” 

That is enough for Ben to speak recklessly. 

“Watch your tongue, little wastoid, or I’ll cut it out of your head.” He times this with a well-placed boot to the stomach, sending Aleric rolling and laughing away, clutching her abdomen. 

“Kicking a woman while she’s down, Solo, not very Jedi-like of you.”

“A great many things about me are not very Jedi-like, peedunky,” Ben rolls his eyes as she writhes dramatically in the pool of their collective sweat. “I’m going to shower. I suggest you do the same.”

“What’s the point? You already burnt all my hair off.”

“Always such a drama queen,” Ben shoots back over his shoulder as he leaves the sparring wing, letting the doors slam. 

***

His hair is still damp when Luke appears to tell him that Han was called away on urgent business, and asked him to pass on his goodbye. 

“He can keep his handed down farewell,” Ben says matter-of-factly, feeling only a slight twinge of guilt as Luke’s face falls. Ben often forgets that his father is a hero to many people, but none more so than Luke Skywalker. 

“You do yourself a disservice to distance yourself in this way,” Luke intones ominously, leaving Ben to towel his hair and ponder over the great many meanings Luke could have intended in that sentence. 

He catches an hour’s meditation before supper, feeling his way through the caverns of his mind and filling it with awareness of the energy around him. The ebbing life of the indoor plant Leia had gifted to him several months ago, doomed to be neglected, led on to the cacophony of breathing from every living body in the base. The subtle vibrations in the planet’s crust matched with the flow of the current of the Great Lakes a stone’s throw from his window. At the Lake’s edge, standing on the shore, Ben feels a familiar consciousness. She stares out across the watery expanse, her mind fronted with cool glass, and Ben hesitates only a second before tapping on it.

_Rey. A little late for reflection, don’t you agree?_

_You always interrupt me just when I’m on the verge of a personal breakthrough._

Ben smiles at the overhanded sarcasm, his eyes closed. _My deepest apologies. Far be it from me to disrupt a soul-search._

He feels, rather than hears, her answering chuckle. _It’s good to hear your voice, Ben. You sound... better._

_My conduct recently may have be taken as a touch unstable. I’m sorry to have burdened you with it._

_You’re not a burden._ She says it so nonchalantly that Ben almost agrees with her. 

_... Regardless, I feel obliged to apologise. So, I’m sorry._

There is a pause while she mulls over it, throwing a few stones to break the lake’s surface. Ben begins to itch. _Are you planning on not accepting?_

 _I’m considering it._ There’s humour in her tone, however, and so Ben lets out the breath he was holding. 

_What were you thinking about?_

_Time. Space. The great unknowns of the universe. What were you thinking about?_

_Nothing. I was meditating, and you distracted me._

_Oh, so I suppose it’s my turn to apologise?_

_I wouldn’t be averse to this._

He enjoys this, this easy flow between them. Rey begins to skip rocks, picking out the flattest, smoothest ones she can find along the shore. The connection is beginning to drain him. 

_Stay where you are._ He half commands, half asks her. Rey doesn’t answer, but goes on leisurely skipping rocks. 

It’s moments before he stands next to her on the shoreline, the gentle slip of the waves no longer just an echo of Rey’s thoughts. He’s content just to stand near her at first, like a comet caught in the orbit of a star. Then he picks up his own rock, choosing the smoothest and flattest as Rey does. He mirrors her movements, bending his elbow and flicking his wrist as he throws each one. They all sink immediately. Rey skips a beautiful sequence, Ben counting at least 13 skitters, before he finally asks for help. 

“Show me,” it’s more of a command. Rey understands, though, and sets about turning his elbow, adjusting his grip so that when he flicks the stones they hit the water with the flat side horizontal to the lake surface. He manages to skip 3, and then 4 times. 

They skip stones for a long time, the silence comfortable between them. Rey aims and throws a large stone, not expecting it to travel far, when Ben reaches for just a tiny fraction of the Force to send it bouncing beautifully clear across the lake to settle on the opposite shore. It’s a gesture hardly worth acknowledging, but Rey _beams_ at him, and Ben can only liken the feeling to being subject to the full force of a solar flare. It stuns him briefly, until he turns his rapidly heating face away. Vexation coils in his gut at his own inability to process how this girl makes him feel. He appears unable to keep from swinging between blinding hatred and exasperation, and feeling as though she is the only thing making sense in his world. 

“Why do you do that?” He asks her, suddenly, as if she might hold the answers.

“Do what?”

“You’re so happy, all the time. So full of hope, even when you’re staring darkness in its face. Why?”

“It’s not a conscious choice, Ben.”

“It must be,” he insists, “anger, frustration - we choose to feel these things. In the same way that you choose to be so stubbornly cheerful.”

“That’s sounds like you’re insulting me,” Rey admits, though for the moment she seems more amused than offended. 

“It’s not my intention,” he protests, but soldiers on. “I only mean that it must exhaust you, to choose to be happy, when so many others in your position would fall into darkness so easily.”

That seems to give her pause. Ben is proud to have finally articulated his thoughts correctly. 

“It’s funny. I never really thought about it before,” she shrugs, throws a stone with an unsatisfying _plop_ into the lake.

“I think about it all the time,” he admits, with difficulty. 

“I think that’s a waste of thought,” she states, laughing at her own phrasing. 

“All directions of thought are valid and worthy of further investigation,” he says stiffly.

“Where do you come up with this stuff?” Rey asks, and Ben assumes the question is rhetorical. 

“I think it,” he says, and that’s when it breaks. 

They collapse into laughter at the same time, both of them meeting each other’s eyes with matching expressions of disbelief. 

“You oaf,” Rey admonishes him affectionately. “You need to get out of your own head sometimes.”

Ben hums his agreement. “We’re late for supper.”

“Now _that’s_ a worthy thought,” Rey brightens at the mention of food, letting her collected stones fall back to the shore as they head inside together. Night has fallen around them, cloaking them in intimacy as the last vestiges of the red sun linger at the horizon’s edge. 

Ben falls behind as she strides onwards, heading into the brightness of the mess hall while he, as ever, lingers in darkness. She is greeted by a dozen calls as she picks up a bowl from the self-serve section, and Ben finds himself alone. Aleric is sat by herself, spooning food into her mouth with one hand as she reads a book avidly with the other. Ben recognises the title; it’s a trashy romance novel which has been making the rounds among the younger apprentices. He sits opposite her, feigning disinterest. 

“If you’re going to ask if you can borrow this after me, the answer is no.”


	6. Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, my friends, buckle yourselves in for a trip to feelsville. I love you all, remember that.

Rey, irrevocably, hopelessly, and without a shadow of a doubt, loves the Millennium Falcon. She loves its unpredictable modifications, its labyrinthian layout, the exposed wires and sparking control panels. She loves that as much as she knows the ship, there is always something new to discover. Despite her resignations against growing attached to too many people, she loves Han Solo. She watches him sometimes when he appears on one of his rare visits, shuffling a pack of cards, his foot propped against the dashboard in the cockpit - something he would never have allowed Rey to get away with. Or he tinkers with a new gadget, muttering to himself over where on earth he’s going to install _this_ one, asking Rey for tools even though she’s often busy with her own fiddling. Sometimes he watches all the blinking lights, like twinkling stars in his own personal galaxy, and his face grows sad and solemn and he won’t speak for at least 15 minutes even though Rey’s asked him for help with something. She’s learnt not to leave him alone when she finds him like that, though it’s her first instinct. It’s what she would want someone to do. As much as she feels the empty ache of loneliness more often than not, she retreats into it willingly whenever she feels the urge to do something as pitiful as cry. 

Han never cries, but he does look sad, and it affects Rey in the same way. There was only one time when she felt brave enough to ask the question burning the tip of her tongue. 

“What are you thinking about?”

He’d sighed; a deep, heavy slump of his shoulders, his eyes fixed on a particular blinking light which Rey knew for a fact was only there to fill a gap in the dashboard. She’d grown curious one visit, and traced the wiring back to nothing in particular. 

“The past,” he’d said eventually. “Leia would probably give me some wise old saying about not dwelling on things you can’t change, but I think sometimes it’s inevitable. That’s my wisdom for you, kid: sometimes the past will catch up with you, and there’s nothing you can do but let it.”

“I’m not really sure about my past,” Rey had admitted, a little shocked by Han’s sudden descent into philosophy. “Apart from that I don’t have one.”

Han had smiled, then, and it warmed Rey through to her core even if she didn’t understand him completely. 

“I guess that just means your future’s more important.” 

Then he’d stood, stretched, and fixed Rey a sandwich she hadn’t asked for, and which tasted revolting, but which she finished in its entirety because she never, ever wasted food. 

When Han visits after the incident, Rey feels so relieved she could melt into a pool of tears right there in the shuttle bay. She settles for burying her face into Han’s shoulder instead, perhaps masking a few damp spots at the corner of her eyes, but who was going to notice? She’s aching to climb up into the claustrophobic rust bucket and tinker and solder and make herself useful. Ben Solo waits in the bay with Luke, his face sour and his body tense as ever. She notices him staring at her with Han, but can’t bring herself to acknowledge him yet. Against her own common sense, she’s still a little raw about how Ben’s been acting around her lately. When Han invites her inside, she practically slams the release hold. 

***

Later in the mess hall, after Ben has surprised her for the millionth time since they first met all those years ago, its easy to slip back into her usual affected self as she takes a seat among her gathered classmates. Ben sits away, she notes, with another oddball character she knows only from rumours. Aleric, the unhinged. It’s a title Rey doesn’t know how to interpret. Sitting opposite Ben, unashamedly reading gushy romance fiction, she seems normal enough. Her white-blonde hair is pulled into a severe braid down her back, her alabaster skin appearing almost translucent. She wears dark grey robes, offsetting her complexion so that she appears brooding, though Rey’s not convinced. She’s tall, taller than Rey, and roped with lean muscle along her shoulders, arms, and thighs. She fits with Ben’s equally lanky frame, even as she apparently ignores him in favour of her book, her mouth moving only occasionally in response to the light conversation Ben makes. The scene makes Rey’s stomach clench with something ugly. She has to look away. 

Ivi, discovering newfound respect for Rey after the incident, calls her attention away back to the cluster of the people she calls friends. She doesn’t look back again. 

***

Luke runs them through modified training now. The focus of their lessons has become even less tangible, if that were possible, and he gives them exercises which challenge them in new ways. It’s more ‘hold that thought for 6 hours’ and less ‘hold that rock for 6 hours’. He reduces the amount of time they spend sparring, which frustrates Rey, but it means that when she gets her hands on a training saber, she makes it count. 

There comes such a session, after weeks of mentally exhausting lessons in control, balance, of counting the blades of grass in a field using the Force while blindfolded, when Luke offers their confiscated training sabers. A ripple of excitement runs through them all, amplified when Luke calls forth Ben, Aleric, Inindos Sparks, Yatifeh Mears, and Dale Pope from outside the room. They filter in, faces carefully blank, and Rey’s heart sinks when she realises what Luke’s intentions are. She can’t stop her gaze from flying to Ben, searching for confirmation, but as if sensing her intentions, he refuses to look at her, focussing solely on Luke. 

“I realise some of you believe I have been neglecting your stance training these last few weeks,” he begins, “so for this session I will attempt to make it up you. You are all used to practising with each other, but this can only foster so much improvement. Today you will take turns sparring my more experienced apprentices, under my supervision, in a single combat scenario.”

He waits for the murmurs to die down before continuing. 

“I will be expecting full participation from you. From my almost-knights, I will be expecting leniency and understanding. This is as much a lesson for you as it is for the others; often it is knowing when not to strike, as much as when to do so, which secures a peaceful resolution to most conflicts.”

He has everyone line up - the underlings outnumber the almost-knights to a significant degree. Luke is unfazed. He orders single matches, choosing one underling and one almost-knight for each match while the rest of the class spectate. Rey’s blood runs cold, then much too hot, when she is not the first underling picked to face an almost-knight. Ivi, stubbornly standing tall and erect, is first matched with Yatifeh Mears of Tyrena. Yatifeh stands a full foot shorter than Ivi as they walk to the hastily evacuated centre of the room to prepare for the match, her thickly braided hair and black skin standing a stark contrast against Ivi’s tropical hue. Yatifeh’s expression is composed, peaceful, even, as she ignites her training saber. Ivi is trying very hard to maintain her composure, but Rey notes the hesitation of her thumb as she flicks on her own weapon. The training blades have no colour, both weapons purely white, and Luke stands offside as a referee, dropping his hand in a slashing movement for them to engage. 

Ivi refuses to hesitate again. She slashes immediately with her saber in an overhead arc, blocked soundly by Yatifeh. The clash of the sabers is loud, and Rey has goosebumps as she watches the fight progress. As they continue, it is clear that Yatifeh is holding back. She blocks and parries, coming up with increasingly inventive ways of slipping Ivi’s strikes. She moves in close, past Ivi’s range, and hits a few playful warning strikes against her. When she pulls back, Rey can see that she is smiling. There is absolutely no malice in any of her movements, and Luke looks satisfied when he finally calls the match, Ivi out of breath and doubled over but grinning madly. Yatifeh laughs, and puts out a hand for Ivi to shake. They leave the cleared space, and the remaining untested apprentices have warmed up to the task, it seems. Less dip their gazes away from Luke as if willing themselves not to be chosen. 

“Dale,” he calls, and the almost-knight steps forward. “And Bress, if you will.”

Rey resists the urge to roll her eyes as the underling Bress squares his shoulders, striding pridefully into the ring. He hails from the famed Shen family, strong with the Force and whose bloodline had sponsored Jedi Masters in times past, and he makes sure everybody knows it. Dale, hailing from a rather more mundane lineage, simply forms his stance and waits for Luke’s signal, expression carefully blank. Rey is unashamed to announce that she is rooting for Dale whole-heartedly, even as the other underlings from prestigious Jedi bloodlines rally behind Bress. She finds she is holding her breath in anticipation of Luke making the signal. 

His hand drops, and nobody moves. Dale is relaxed in his stance, Bress taut like an arrow waiting for release. It is unsurprising that he advances first. He is eager to show off, as well, showcasing several of the higher-skilled movements as he spins tightly, his saber held at an angle so as to make it difficult to deflect. He is encouraged by several shouts from the underlings, but Rey remains silent. Though fighting in an understated style, it is clear who has this match in terms of control and effectiveness. What takes Bress three moves and an elaborate setup, Dale accomplishes through simple well-thought out decisive moves. Rey feels as though all she has learned through this session is that she has so much still to learn. Dale and Yatifeh fight beautifully and effortlessly, predicting and reshaping strategies as if they have been sparring all their lives. Their opponents showcase only their need for improvement. 

Luke calls the match after Dale swings out his leg in an effortless sweep which sends Bress onto his arse with such candour that his nose begins to bleed.

Bress, holding a sleeve to his traitorous nose, rejoins the ranks of the underlings. Rey can feel her heartbeat in her ears. Sweat begins to bead on her forehead. She has a terrible vision of being called up to fight against Ben, who will dance her around the ring in humiliation before Luke, taking pity, ends the match. 

“Rey, step forward,” Luke calls, and she does, resisting the urge to keep walking until she is running out of the doors, out of the base, into a ship and away from the planet. “Aleric, please.”

Rey feels faint as ‘the unhinged’ moves to take her place opposite her. She can’t resist darting a quick glance towards Ben, who is watching her with the intensity of a wolf watching over its inexperienced young. Suddenly, she would rather it were Ben. Anyone, absolutely anyone - Luke, even - would be preferable to the woman currently sizing her up with a predatory grin. She’s so tall. Rey feels pint-sized standing so close to her. How ridiculous she must look. 

She is just barely aware enough to ignite her saber before Luke’s hand drops and the match is underway. Rey knows instinctively that as the smaller opponent, she must move in closer to gain the upper hand, but no amount of the Force will move her feet closer to Aleric. Thirty seconds must pass before Aleric gives up defending and moves in for offence. Rey only just manages to block the two lazy strikes Aleric throws her, which had anyone else thrown, Rey would have blocked easily. She’s better than this. Slipping neatly into the wider stance of Djem So, Rey is more prepared for Aleric’s next blow, which she neatly counters using Aleric’s considerable body weight against her. The result is meagre; Aleric stumbles, caught off guard by Rey’s quick recovery, but Rey could burst with pride. Aleric is more careful in choosing her next action, but Rey’s confidence has spiked. She defends the next two attacks with relative ease, even countering with a cheeky lunge which scrapes Aleric’s side with a delicious spark. 

Aleric’s temper grows steadily throughout their match, which seems to go on and on. Luke is as transfixed as the rest as Rey and Aleric spin together. Rey notes the light flush on her cheeks, the slight furrow in her brow, and most clearly the extra bite in her blows as they continue. Rey does her best to remember it is a lesson in control, but if she draws on the Force to make her faster, and give her short bursts of strength, nobody who notices stops her. When she catches Aleric accidentally on her cheek as she turns unexpectedly towards Rey’s thrust, Rey expects Luke to stop them. He does not. Sporting a new pink stripe, like a slap mark, Aleric ceases to hold back anything at all. Rey recognises a few Ataru movements as Aleric leaps through the air, unabashedly channeling the Force to make her actions impossibly quick, and grows apprehensive. Luke steps forward, signalling for the fight end, and Rey immediately steps back, grateful. Aleric cannot, caught in an elaborate flip, and Rey flinches, expecting to feel the weighty sizzle of a saber against her skin. 

The room floods with a sudden chill instead. Rey looks to see the broad expanse of Ben’s back turned to her, his own glowing saber pressed against Aleric’s. Luke quickly hides his shock, and intervenes, disarming both Ben and Aleric. They fall into attention immediately, deferring to their master. Rey is fixated on the back of Ben’s head, willing him to turn around so she can see the expression on his face. She cannot guess what drove him to interfere, but she feels grateful nonetheless. 

“Aleric,” Luke starts, his tone betraying his disappointment, “you should have known better than to use such advanced techniques against someone who is less skilled than you.”

“Master Luke,” Bress interjects suddenly, his face a mask of shock, “didn’t you feel that? When Aleric performed that final strike... that was the dark side of the Force, wasn’t it?”

Rey had felt it also. 

“You are correct, Bress.” 

Ben grows tense where he stands turned away from Rey. Luke addresses only Aleric, still breathing hard from the match. 

“You have displayed how poor your control is over the Force, and your own anger, Aleric,” he says. “I cannot allow you to train until you have demonstrated control.”

Aleric pales.

“Master- it wasn’t, I didn’t draw on the dark side, Master Luke!” She cries, “I felt it, but it wasn’t me-”

“Enough!” Luke snaps. “You are confined to your quarters. Go.”

Aleric recoils as if she has been slapped. She turns, and flees, the door to the training room slamming loudly behind her. 

“The rest of you are dismissed. I would advise you meditate and reflect. We will return to normal lessons tomorrow.”

The crowd of apprentices thins slowly, with many lingering to stare wonderingly at Rey. Rey only has eyes for Ben. She waits him out until he is forced to turn around, and meets his gaze immediately. He holds it for a few seconds, before his eyes drop to the floor and he walks past Rey to escape the indescribable atmosphere which has descended on the room. The dark side was used here, not in some distant, crumbling temple, but on the base. Used by a student, nonetheless. The rumour mill would be churning all night. Rey wonders, briefly, if she is purely bad luck. 

“Luke,” she addresses him softly as takes up a meditative seat right there in the training room. His eyes remain closed.

“Yes, Rey?” He sighs. Rey’s heart sinks lower. She can’t say what is caught in her throat. It’s too painful. 

“Nothing. It’s nothing, thank you. Goodbye.”

She runs from the room, and she knows exactly where her feet are carrying her. In a matter of moments, she is standing outside Ben Solo’s chamber, her fist hesitating to knock on the door. He opens it before she has chance to, clearly expecting her. His face is haunted. 

“Rey.” He greets her simply, and Rey has never felt so uncomfortable in her life. 

“Ben...” she hesitates and hates herself for it. “Can I come in? I’d like to talk.”

In lieu of a verbal response, he simply turns back to his room and leaves the door open. She walks timidly inside, jumping when the door shutters behind her. It’s the first time she’s been inside his room. Her first thought is how much bigger it is than her humble cell. Her second is how bare it is. There is nothing here to suggest that it is inhabited by anyone, aside from the messy bedcovers. Rey struggles to imagine Ben sleeping soundly in that bed, and abandons the idea entirely. It would be easier to picture him sleeping upside down like a bat. 

“What is it?” He prompts her, sinking onto his bed. Rey looks around for a spare chair, and finding none, sits gingerly next to him on the bed. Almost imperceptibly, he shifts to allow her more room. The air is thick around them. 

“Just now, when I was sparring with Aleric... it wasn’t her who channelled the dark side.” It isn’t a question, though she had intended to phrase it as one. Seeing how he cannot meet her eye any longer, Rey feels secure in making the accusation. 

“You’re right. It wasn’t her.” He’s staring intently at a piece of the floor like a prisoner on death row waiting for the final swing of the axe.

“It was you.” She needs to hear him say it. He breathes in, a deep, shuddering breath, and finally meets her eye.

“It was me.” His eyes are brown and clear and so _gentle_. She cannot sense any of the dark around him now. Sitting beside her is just Ben. 

“I don’t understand,” she settles on, after the silence stretches. It’s the truest thing she can muster which she’s confident won’t hurt him. 

“Aleric wouldn’t have stopped,” he says, “I couldn’t let that happen.”

She’s drawn in by his earnest expression, how he has begun to lean in towards her. It’s intoxicating. 

“Ben,” she says it softer than she intended, and his eyelashes flutter ever so slightly in response. “Ben. I wouldn’t have been hurt. Badly.”

“I know.” He agrees, “but still. I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Luke is scared.”

“Luke is always scared,” he says with some venom, and Rey draws back. “There’s always something wrong.”

“How long have you harboured the dark side in you, Ben?” She asks, her lips pressed tight. Her hands press into her lap. She has the strangest urge to scream. 

“All my life. Since I could first register the Force it was there. Waiting. It talked to me, sometimes.” It is normal for every Force-sensitive to have both light and dark in them. That is balance. Rey does not think Ben is talking about balance.

“Does Luke know?” She regrets it as soon as she says it, but it hangs between them regardless. 

“I don’t know.” He answers eventually, sounding strung out and tired to the very bone.

“It’s okay,” she says, though it isn’t. “You can control it.”

Ben laughs, and it makes Rey ache. It is a laugh of despair. 

“I think today has established that is a lie.”

“Learn, then. I’ll help. I know I’m not... good, like you, but I’ll do anything, Ben.” She’s startled by how much she means what is coming out of her mouth. “Anything at all. What do you need me to do?”

Ben takes another breath, and then several more. He draws them out slowly, looking past Rey at the door for a few moments. Rey’s heart has crawled up her throat to sit in her mouth. He looks at her, finally. His eyes are so gentle. So dark. Like a pool of volcanic water, she wants to drown in their warmth. 

“Stay away from me.”

It takes a moment for it to register. When it does, Rey feels something fragile and neglected inside her shatter. 

“I don’t-”

“Yes, you do.” His face has, once more, shuttered, and Rey is drawn back to all those weeks ago, right after the incident when he had coldly brushed her aside then. She’s not sure she can handle a third. Clamping down on the emotion rising in her throat, Rey asks what she thinks is a necessary question.

“What are we going to do about Aleric?”

For a second, Ben’s expression ripples with anger. “Leave her to me.”


	7. Succumbing

Ben sits for a long time after Rey leaves. He stares at his hands, at the wall, and when he runs out of things to look at, he destroys them. His saber remains holstered; this anger is too raw for anything other than his own two fists. 

He barely registers the pain. His knuckles drip with warm by the time he feels stable enough to pause. 

_Why is his head still so empty?_

He’d channelled the dark side without a second thought, as easily as he drew breath. The deep well of darkness within him had simply opened when he watched Rey cower away from Aleric’s saber. _Foolish girl._ Aleric had truly allowed herself to be outmatched. She would never have been so careless against Ben. Still, her temper was known to get the better of her at times. Stars knew Ben had no right to throw stones in his position. It was Luke he was most surprised at, in the end. A Jedi Master, unable or more likely unwilling to accept one of his students as prone to darkness. To the ways of the sith. 

Their relation was clouding his better judgement, it was the only explanation. Under no other circumstance would Luke be so carelessly ignorant of the truth. It was truth, after all. Ben could see now, the ease with which the Force flowed through him, accelerating him to protect Rey from what he knew would have only been a glancing blow at best. The surprise and suspicion in Aleric’s eyes when she realised what he had done. Luke’s worry drawn across his face in harsh lines. He was glad to have resisted the urge to turn and check on Rey. He had no wish to see what dark judgements waited for him in her eyes. 

He felt no relief when Luke turned on Aleric. He felt only numbness, a cold prickle in his fingertips and down through his calves, as if the circulation had been cut off. A physical ailment would be easier to treat than the cancerous spread of darkness which grew at the base of his skull, swelling every day and consuming all light. A short stay in the med bay. Rey fussing over him, finding excuses to keep visiting. He wanted it so badly. 

His knuckles finally bothered him enough that he sought to treat them. They had pooled onto the floor; mixed with the devastation his room lay in, it looked as though he had been murdered. Maybe things would be better if he had been. He ripped his ruined pillowcase and wrapped it around his fists in a makeshift bandage, letting out a long-suffering sigh. Rey had asked him what they were going to do about Aleric. He knew she wanted him to confess to Luke, offer up his sins like shining coins and be the dutiful student he deserved, seeking penance. It would make her feel better about her part in the wrongful conviction, absolve her of guilt. Rey was forever doing the right thing. It was as if she was scared of disappointing Luke. His rejection, Ben guessed, was her greatest fear. Her being here at all rested on his personal judgement and good favour in her eyes. Ben could laugh. If that were true, he would have been expelled from the academy many years ago. He was still here, however. Hanging on by a thread. 

A thread which Aleric now sat primed to sever. Ben had always imagined she would make a good sith. 

*** 

Aleric’s chambers were close by enough that Ben didn’t risk bumping into anyone going to see her. He knocked once, and the door swished open immediately. Aleric was sat on her bed when the door opened, but she leapt to her feet when she realised it was Ben. He could taste her anger like bitter copper in his mouth. Her eyes flew to his blood-stained bandaged knuckles, and narrowed. 

“Solo,” she said curtly. “Come to gloat?”

He takes her by surprise when he slams her against the far window, tucking his forearm under her chin and watching her face flush a delightful shade of pink. The wild coarseness of his anger had been dulled slightly by his previous outburst, and all that remains now is a cool, composed desire to watch her choke out beneath his fingers. He waits as she traverses from pink to red, and from red to purple, and from purple to the endlessly dangerous dark blue. Then he releases her, coughing and spluttering, feeling her terror and only being able to answer it with his own marginal satisfaction. 

“You made a mistake today,” he says, and he’s surprised by how calm his voice sounds even to him. 

“ _I_ made a mistake today?” Aleric repeats incredulously, her voice little more than a coarse whisper. “Solo, you’re a maniac. I wouldn’t have hurt the stupid brat. There was no need to go all dark side on me.”

“You used Ataru against an apprentice who only mastered Soresu three months ago.”

“Yes. Well. She was pushing me.” Aleric rubs her neck. Bruises are already starting to form. 

“So you thought you’d push back. Your vanity is incorrigible.” 

“Your obsession with the desert rat is worse, I’d say. I mean, look what she’s driven you to.”

“You deserved worse.”

“Any worse and I’d be expired on the floor with a face like a kriffing beetroot, Solo. Don’t pretend to be an enactor of justice when I know you only wanted revenge for your insufferable girlfriend.” Aleric spits at him. 

“Don’t be over dramatic, it doesn’t suit you. You know Luke believes it was you who used the dark side.”

“How surprised he’ll be when I tell him it was his own dear nephew prodigy.”

“He already knows,” Ben spins the half-lie. “He sensed it in me from the beginning. It was only a matter of time before something triggered it.”

“Remind me to stay away from you, Ben Solo, when this is all over.”

“My advice to you is to accept whatever punishment Luke is coming to give you quietly. It could go badly for you otherwise.”

“Is that a threat, Solo?” Aleric doesn’t look particularly cowed, but Ben can feel her pulse begin to race. 

“It’s advice,” Ben clarifies. “Luke is weak. He’s looking for someone else to blame besides himself. Trials are coming up soon; after that you can leave Yavin as a knight and never have to look at my face again.”

Aleric quiets at the mention of the Jedi Trials. If she passes them, she’ll be cleared to run missions off-planet. Ben is counting on her to want that more than she wants petty revenge. 

“Get out,” she says, but he knows he’s won. She’ll take whatever piddling slap on the wrist Luke gives her; if she doesn’t, Ben will personally ensure that she never sees Knight status. He leaves, his hands throbbing, feeling strangely giddy. He wants to laugh. 

Instead, he goes to inform a droid that a stray Skreeg had wandered into the base and decided to attack, of all things, Ben’s personal chambers. 

***

Aleric doesn’t attend dinner, but Rey does. She sits with her gaggle of apprentices and laughs loudly, raucously, as if she has never experienced such a thing as hurt. Aside from what Ben brushes off an accidental eye lock, where Rey looks the coldest he has ever seen her, she remains engrossed in conversation for the duration of dinner. Ben has no stomach for food, but he picks up a bowl of lumpy oatmeal to sit and brood over, alone. He tries to remember that he asked for this; it’s difficult, when Rey glows so brightly not 5 feet away. He can’t help but listen in. 

“Did you get that shuttle fixed, Rey?” Ivi asks, the young Twi’lek. A little severe for Ben’s tastes, but he’s no one to talk when it comes to the intricacies of personal disposition. 

“It was easy, actually!” Rey brightens at the chance to talk shop. “Artoo helped. It turned out the circuit was fried, someone must have been pushing the engines a little hard.”

“I wonder who that could have been.” Ivi rests her chin on her hands, elbows on the tabletop, and lets her gaze slide nonchalantly over to where Ben sits in solitude. Rey follows it, and ducks her head away.

“I don’t know,” she replies, and sits with her own bowl of glorified gruel for the next few minutes in contemplation. Ben counts to ten, and then to twenty, and when that doesn’t work to stifle his spiking anger, he clenches his fists so hard that the recently scabbed over knuckles split painfully. 

“Still, thanks for fixing it. Nice to know we have a getaway vehicle if things turn sour.”

“What do you mean?”

Ivi rolls her eyes. “Darkness is like a virus. One gets turned, and it’ll soon spread. I’m surprised Luke isn’t forcing us to do meditation 24 hours a day, he’s so spooked. Did you see his face earlier?”

Rey’s face has drained of all colour, but Ivi either hasn’t noticed or is ignoring her. 

“It’s only a matter of time, I’ll wager you anything. The weaker ones will go first - the ones who’ve been tempted before, or who need the shortcut to power. Then it’ll be the knights. Once the knights go, Luke will have to join them or be killed by them. That shuttle might be our only escape.”

The rest of the apprentices have taken on a harrowed look, listening intently to Ivi as if she is telling a ghost story around a campfire. One has a spoonful of porridge frozen halfway to his open mouth, eyes bugging out of his head. Ivi lets the words hang in the air for a few pregnant seconds, before she cuts through the tension with her oddly shrill laugh.

“Oh my stars, your faces! I’m _joking_. Luke’s got everything under control.”

Slowly the other apprentices join her as she laughs herself silly, until all of them have forgotten the terror which held them in grip. All of them aside from Rey, whose pale complexion has developed a sickly green hue. Ben’s knuckles are oozing steadily down his wrist. He can’t listen anymore. He pulls his sleeves over his hands and abandons his dinner, marching from the room. The sound of the apprentices laughter chases him down the hallway, ringing in his head until he can slam his chamber door on them. He’s broken into a sweat. A headache pulsates in his temples. He recognises this feeling. 

_Fear_.

His mind, empty for so many weeks, explodes into a cacophony of voices. They speak over each other, some talking, others shouting. They clamour for his attention, offer him secrets, glory, power. They try to command him. Some he can understand, others cry out in languages he has never heard before. He can’t bear the noise, the chaos. His palms beat at his skull, and he hears himself screaming as if from far away. For a moment, the only thought he can hang onto with any clarity is that this must be the feeling of going mad. 

As suddenly as they arrive, they leave. They ebb away, releasing their barbed hooks from the edges of his mind and simply vanishing. All but one. 

_Ben._ It says, in a voice like gravel, a thousand years old. _You need not be afraid._. 

_I’m not afraid,_ he snarls back, the only time he has responded in kind to a disembodied voice. The voice laughs. 

_You can’t hide anything from me, Ben, least of all your fears._

_Who are you?_

_An ally. Perhaps, if things go to plan, your master. Master Snoke._

The name resonates with power. Ben feels a shiver run down his spine, and pushes back the urge to throw up. His hair is plastered to his forehead, the sweat drips from his nose to the floor. He hadn’t realised he had fallen to his knees. 

_What do you want from me?_

_I see in you... a power unlike any I have sensed before. Like your grandfather before you, Ben, you were born to greatness. You need only take it._

His grandfather, the failed Jedi and Sith. The curse upon his family, who had taken Luke’s hand and broken his mother’s heart. Ben swallows. 

_He was a failure. Why would I want to be anything like him?_

_You know only what they have told you, Ben. Your grandfather’s only failure was his weakness in turning back to the light which had deserted him. You have the potential to be greater still. It is your destiny as a Skywalker; his blood flows in your veins, his power through your soul. Everything you know is false. Let me teach you._

_I have a master already._

_That is easily rectified._

The thought enters his head so easily, as if he imagined it himself. An image of Luke kneeling before him, broken and disarmed. Ben’s saber hangs in the air by his throat, and with no hesitation, he swings it. 

_No!_

_He holds you back. You will never reach your full potential under his tutelage. It’s time to move on. You will bend, or you will die._

Ben is silent, in body and mind, as he considers Snoke. 

_If you require further evidence, ask Luke yourself_ he says as Ben broils in his dissension. He says no more, and doesn’t wait for Ben to reply. He ebbs from his mind like the rest, leaving him, cold in his own sweat, on the mirror-bright sheen of his floor. It is all he can do to curl into himself, feel the crusts of his knuckles crack and threaten to break, and rest his flushed forehead against it. 

***

Luke is meditating when Ben finds him finally, still reeling from his encounter with Snoke. He is doing what is right in going to his master, yet it feels as though he tiptoes on the edge of a great precipice. He feels hollow.

Luke breaks his concentration as soon as Ben enters the room, as if that isn’t evidence enough of Ben’s inner turmoil. He looks concernedly to his nephew, resting his open palms on his knees as he remains seated, imploring Ben to speak with his earnestness.

“Uncle. Master. I-” he cuts himself off, his throat closing as he bends over at the waist to dry heave. Luke stands, and brings a glass of water to him. 

“What is it, Ben?” He asks. Ben notices as if for the first time, standing so close to one another, that he is taller than his uncle. 

“What swayed Darth Vader to the dark side of the Force?” The question startles him as much as it appears to shock Luke. He had no intention of bringing up his grandfather, and yet the words slipped from his tongue as if bathed in oil. 

“You go far back, Ben. What makes you curious about such a subject?” Luke’s expression is heavy. Ben longs to shrug off its weight. 

“I don’t know,” he lies, “a vision. A nightmare. I want to know.”

“You already know all that there is to know. Even though he was my father I probably know as much as you do about him. All I can tell you is what I was told.”

“Tell me, please. I want to know.” His voice breaks, and he hates himself for such weakness. It seems to sway Luke, however, who leads him to sit.

“You already know that your grandfather was prophesied as the Chosen one - someone strong with both the light and the dark, who would bring balance to the Force. You also already know how that didn’t quite work out. Ben, I’ve lived in my father’s shadow for most of my life now, and I’ve wondered about him as you do now. I have come to my own conclusion that it was his love for Padmé Amidalla, your grandmother, and the peril her pregnancy put her in, which drove Vader to such lengths that he would consider turning to be his only remaining option.”

“The darkness was always inside him,” Ben intones. 

“There is darkness in us all, Ben. That is balance. Where great Light exists, so must powerful Darkness. It is possible to turn, and to turn again. Our choices define us, in that respect. Prophecies and visions can only tell us so much, and it’s always best to take them with a pinch of salt, anyway.” Luke winks at Ben conspiratorially, but he is no mood for joviality. He stands abruptly, bowing deeply to Luke. 

“Thank you, Master Luke. I believe you’ve clarified something for me.”

“Ben.” Luke stops him. “It’s become clear to me that you’ve been struggling recently. I’m here for not only as your master, but as your uncle, too. You need not struggle alone.”

Ben barely hears him. “Thank you.” 

He leaves feeling dazed, and allows his feet to carry him slowly back to his own chamber. The sun had by now long set, and the lake view from his window looks like a black mirror. The forest beyond is still and quiet. He sits on his bed for a moment, taking in the scene, before laying back against his replaced sheets and pillow. He hadn’t turned the light on, and in the cool black it feels like less of an assault when Snoke touches his mind once more. This time, rather than fighting, Ben lets him in. He is surprised that he doesn’t immediately begin rifling through his head, as Ben would have done, but rather waits for Ben to say something. He’s growing tired of speaking. 

_I don’t know what I want._ He confesses. 

_But you’re not satisfied._

_No,_ he admits, _I’m not._

_You would be satisfied with me. I can offer you so much more._

In the end, it is not with a sudden burst of inspiration, or with a great inner struggle that Ben relinquishes all control. He slips into it like sleep, this state of being. The darkness swallows him passively, as if he was always meant to succumb. He had simply stopped fighting. 

_Tell me what to do._

_First, you must accept me._ Snoke is a proud presence in his mind. Absolute, unwavering. Simple.

 

_Yes, Master._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, folks, this is the chapter! From now on we’ll be seeing less of Ben Solo and more of Kylo Ren in all his sith glory. I can’t wait! Hang onto your hats for the next chapter...
> 
> My vision of Ben turning to the dark side isn’t some huge climax. I think that takes away from the insidiousness of the power of the dark side; in my opinion, Ben is in conflict, unsure of what he wants, struggling to build relationships with the people he cares about, and feeling very alone. The lure of the darkness is, to me, it’s simplicity. It promises to do away with the middle ground of morality where we often get stuck. Things become black and white. There is clarity and focus, which bring stability, which Ben craves.


	8. An Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out to be a bit of a monster, and it’s slightly longer than usual. Warnings for graphic violence, grief/trauma, and death.

Rey wakes in the night to screaming. A bell is being rung, loud and ominous, and the air is hazy as she sits up in bed. She can’t remember what she was dreaming, but her face is flushed as if she has been running. She throws off her covers and rushes to the window - she can see light where there shouldn’t be. Her sleep-addled brain takes a moment to catch up with her. It’s fire. The base is burning. 

She is barefoot as she runs from her room, pounding on the doors to the rooms either side of her. When she grows desperate and kicks one in, its already empty. She abandons the corridor, the haze growing thicker and thicker. She ducks her head, pulling her night shirt over her nose against the fumes. Her eyes begin to water. What the hell was going on? She hurries outside where the air is clearer, and takes a step back from what she can see. It’s worse than she thought. 

Half of the building in already just smouldering embers, coughing out sparks. The other half is catching up, thick black smoke billowing into the sky, threatening to block the light from the planet’s moon. There is no saving this. 

Standing in the open air, it grows quiet enough that Rey can only hear the dim crackling of the blaze as it slowly engulfs the remainder of the apprentice quarters. The bell has stopped, and the screams have ended. _Why wasn’t I woken?_ Rey wonders to herself dazedly. How long had she been left to sleep while her home burns around her? The flames lick up the sides of the buildings, catching onto dry vines which crawl up the brickwork. She can hear something else, faintly, aside from the blaze. It sounds like weeping. When she finds the source, she’s struck by the scene she stumbles upon. Fresh tears well and spill over her cheeks, this time nothing to do with the acrid smoke. Terren is hunched over the body of her brother. His eyes are open, though clouded and covered with flecks of ash. His neck is badly burned, the damage receding below his nightshirt. Terren, dirtied and covered with ash, ignores Rey as she kneels beside them. She holds her brother by the shoulders, gently rocking them both, whispering to him in Nautolen. 

_My brother, my brother_ , she chokes out thickly, _come back to me_.

Rey touches Zon’s shoulder, and Terren instantly recoils, holding her brother closer. _No! He is mine! You will not take him away._

_You have to run,_ Rey pleads, _the academy is burning, we must all run. Where is Luke? Where is Luke?_

Terren shakes her head emphatically, clinging closer, beyond words. Driven by desperation, Rey leaves them together where they are sheltered from the worst of the smoke, promising herself she will return. She needs to find Luke. She stumbles over debris, pieces of smouldering wood and brick where the building has collapsed. She feels once again like a scavenger, picking over the bare bones of the remains of disaster. Though she’d often imagined what had happened to the immense ships which lay abandoned on Jakku, she had not pictured disaster this close to home. It hurts almost physically, her stomach knotted painfully tight as she combs through wreckage. She hopes she finds nothing. Here it is not compacter parts and machinery she would salvage, but bodies. Family.

She finds nothing, but cannot bring herself to feel relieved. She looks to where the remains of the building, barely standing, still burn. She doesn’t hesitate to run inside where the smoke pours from every doorway and opened window, pulling up her nightshirt once more. She breathes in a heat so very unlike the desert, each breath burning her throat, her lungs. She can barely see. 

“Luke!” She calls out, as loudly as her singed voice can manage. She calls again. No one replies. 

She presses further in, staggering through rooms which are unrecognisable to her. She stumbles over something and finally falls to the ground, retching and coughing. Down low, where the smoke is thinner, she can see through watering eyes that she tripped over the corner of a handheld comm unit. It crackles into life at her touch. Rey immediately seizes the chance to broadcast the planet’s location and a distress signal as quickly as her fingers can manage. The comm continues to crackle, probably damaged from the fire, but Rey continues to type, setting it to repeat itself every thirty seconds before she is forced to leave it, placing it at the very least away from the smoke and the corridor. She knows the fire will soon engulf it, and the signal will be lost, but there’s a chance someone on a ship will hear and answer. 

She leaves the building as a lost cause; nobody still living could remain there. Seconds after she staggers from its wrecked opening, it collapses in on itself. The only remaining structures are the hangar bay and the shuttle keep, made of metal rather than ancient brick. She runs to the shuttle bay, hoping to find a group of equally confused apprentices awaiting evacuation. It is, of course, empty - even the shuttle is missing. Whoever had been here first, and she hopes to kriffing heaven it was the others, they have already escaped. Rey is given pause as the thought crosses her mind that she has, once more, been abandoned. 

The thought is interrupted by the unholy clamour of an explosion, emanating from the forests surrounding the remains of the base. In her confusion earlier Rey had simply ran, intent on finding someone physically, but now she taps into the Force, clearing her mind as much as she can and taking a long, calming breath. She looks for Luke’s force signature, and finds it where she suspects - in the forest. It’s a faint signal, but Rey blames that on her own weakened state. She moves to follow it, when the sound of familiar engines rumbles into the atmosphere of the planet. 

The Millennium Falcon descends, spotlights blaring, like an angel from heaven, and it is all Rey can do to jump and wave her arms and scream until she is hoarse. The ship draws closer, and she can see Han and Chewie at the controls in the cockpit. Even from a distance, they look grim. 

She rushes to meet the ship as it lands a safe distance from the ruins of the academy, and Rey is climbing aboard before the ramp has even fully extended, running into Han halfway to the cockpit and throwing herself at him. He feels small in her arms, her chin reaching his shoulder comfortably. When had she grown so much? There was a time Han would have thought nothing of lifting her under the armpits and hoisting her into the air to reach a faraway piece of tech. His arms squeeze her firmly before they each pull back, and he reaches up to wipe away the dirt and tear-tracks from her cheeks. His expression is reserved, but there is a mixture of both sadness and resolve in his eyes. 

“What happened?” They ask each other. They share a look of concern. Neither has the answers they seek.

“I woke up and the base was already burning. There aren’t many of us left - I think the rest took the shuttle off-planet,” Rey explains.

“Not possible, I would have run into them on the way in,” Han refutes.

“The shuttle’s gone, though,” Rey furrows her brow. “Luke is in the forest, I heard an explosion.”

“Come on, Chewie!” Han calls behind him, reaching to unholster his blaster. “We’re going to get Luke. You said there were others?”

Rey flinches at the memory of the twins. “There were two. It’s just one now... she’s in a bad way.”

Han nods. “Go and get her on the ship and _stay put_ till we get back.”

“But-”

“ _Stay. Put._ ” He emphasises each word with a hard finger in the chest. Rey nods, sullen. 

They leave the ship and split up, with Rey heading to retrieve Terren and Han and Chewie taking off for the forest. A new spout of smoke points the way among the trees. 

Rey finds the twins exactly as she left them. Terren looks up at her now, though, when Rey draws near. She almost can’t bear to look for the amount of grief and pain Terren exudes, but she presses on. It’s easier when she thinks of it as a mission.

_He’s gone. My brother._ Terren speaks in shock. Rey puts a firm hand on her shoulder. 

“Come on. He’s one with the Force now. You know he’ll never truly leave you,” Rey attempts to console as well as hurry Terren away back to the Falcon, torn at leaving Zon’s body among the rubble, but Terren is alive and needs help. She half leads, half drags her away. She’s walking with a limp. 

Back on the Falcon Rey puts Terren in one of the tiny, cramped cots for the crew, leaving her staring up at the bunk ceiling in silence. It’s heartbreaking, and Rey has to turn away. She heads to the weapons vault, by-passing Han’s security with ease. His collection is mostly made up of blasters, but nestled in amongst the guns, tucked neatly in the corner, is something which sends a wave of emotion through Rey. Her old staff from Jakku; Han had kept it all these years. She had given it to him as a child, not long after their first meeting, expecting him to throw it away or cash it in for a few coin. She was high on the teachings of the Jedi at the time, eager to learn and leave her past behind. Seeing it now, her hands reaches for it automatically. It feels right in her grip, balanced and strong. She takes a blaster gun as well for good measure, holstering it to her belt, and closes the bay door behind her as she makes to join Han. She’s confident Terren will stay where she is, but Rey is past taking chances. If she wanders, she’ll be relegated to the ship, at least. 

She jogs steadily to the forest where the smoke plume is beginning to trail off. At least they haven’t burned half the forest down as well. She reaches for Luke with the Force and finds him once again. Something is off about the signal, and it creates a panic in her which squeezes tight around her heart. Even when in the past Luke hasn’t actively projected his presence, it had felt stronger than this. She enters the forest, still following the thread of the force connection, and keeps an eye out for Han. She is so busy looking ahead that she neglects to watch her step, and for the second time that night she trips. With a face full of dirt, Rey looks forward to finding each and every bruise from tonight at a later time. 

“Kid,” she hears Han whisper, and whips her head around. She looks directly into the disapproving face of Han Solo, who lays with his stomach pressed low, his blaster trained ahead. “I thought I told you to stay put.”

“It’s your own fault for believing me,” Rey whispers back, settling in next to him and drawing her own blaster. “What are we waiting for?”

Han’s face falls. “We found the source of the explosion. I’m sorry, Kid. Turns out you were right. It was the shuttle which exploded.”

“What?” Rey feels her mouth drop open. “That can’t be right. That can’t be... was there anyone left?”

“I’m sorry, Kid.” Han repeats, uncomfortable in the face of her grief. Shock ricochets through her, sharp within her ribs. All of the apprentices... _Ben._

“He wasn’t there, Rey. Ben wasn’t with them.” She hadn’t realised she’d said his name aloud. 

“He must be with Luke,” Rey suggests hopefully, and Han nods. 

“We need a plan of attack. Whoever caused that shuttle to crash must be with them as well.”

“I can feel Luke not far from here. We should try and get closer. We’ve no idea what we’re up against.”

Han presses a finger to his lips for silence, and Rey follows close behind as he ducks low and moves stealthily through the trees. It is almost entirely dark here - beneath the spread of the canopy above, not even the faint light of the moon can reach them. 

It is easy, therefore, to spot Luke and Ben through the dim surroundings, their ignited lightsabers like beacons in the gloom. Rey’s blood runs cold as she picks apart the scene in the mixed gleam of their battling sabers. Luke is very clearly tired, possibly injured. He carries his saber with his mechanical arm, the other pressing tight to his side. He leans slightly in his stance, something he would never allow himself to do were he not physically prevented. Ben, by contrast, vibrates with power. Rey has never seen him in this way; his face is sickly pale with dark rings under his eyes, and he sneers down at Luke. There is a cruelty in him which did not exist before, discernible even from a distance. Rey has heard enough about the dark side to know it’s possession, and tendrils of cold power emanate from him wildly, like blood from a wound. She can sense the change, but Han can see it without her telling him. He looks, beside her, like he has seen a ghost. It’s a terrible expression, one Rey wishes she could wipe from his face as easily as her own tears. Those lines look as though they have always been there, pulling the corners of his mouth down and shrinking him somehow. He could have aged 10 years in that instant. 

“Han,” she reaches to touch his hand, unable to hide the hurt when he flinches his hand away, coming back to himself roughly. The message was clear. _Not now_. 

Hidden as they are among the trees Rey feels confident enough to begin a slow creep forwards, always minding to angle her body behind the thickest tree trunks, her eyes fixed on Luke and Ben. Han is warm behind her, mirroring her footsteps, stepping only where she has stepped. Not that Rey thinks stealth matters at this point; she’s confident the pair are too engrossed in one another to be even peripherally aware of her and Han. Her heart clenches as Ben’s voice rises to a hoarse shout in the midst of his conversation with Luke. His saber, angled down in a neutral position, threatens to jerk into an attack motion. Luke, in that way he has about him, is almost meditative in his calm. They finally get close to hear with some degree of clarity their heated conversation, and Rey motions to Han for them to wait. She wants to hear what Ben has to say. She needs to understand. 

“Ben, I’m sorry,” Luke says sincerely. His eyes are locked on Ben’s, so intense that even Rey must blink against the uncomfortable feeling in her gut. 

“It’s too late for that,” Ben spits. “You were selfish; you held me back. But I’ve outgrown you.”

“Is that truly what you think of me? You think I would impede your learning - that I even have the _power_ to do such a thing - for my own pride and vanity?”

“It doesn’t matter. I know what I have to do.”

He tightens his grip around his saber, and raises it as if to strike. Luke makes no move to stop him. It is Rey, unable to hold back, who interrupts the scene, bursting forth from the cover of the trees and aiming her blaster. She pulls the trigger as Ben turns to see who has dared to stay his hand, and Rey _wills_ herself to strike true. The blast glances off the hilt of Ben’s saber, damaging the mechanism. He drops it in surprise as the beam flickers, falters, and dies. Luke, somewhat relieved, switches off his own as well. It is suddenly very dark. 

“Ben,” she calls, hating the emotion in her voice. She is not strong enough to shield herself yet. To speak to him, she must bare all. “Please!”

Ben is staring at her, his eyes boring holes into her skull. She searches them in what little light remains, hoping against hope that somewhere in him there still exists the one who skipped stones with her that night; who stole a shuttle to traverse the jungle looking for her; who stood before her, ready to fight for her no matter how large or small the threat. She sees a flicker of light, and finally is able to draw breath for what feels like the first time that night. He reaches up with his open palm, and hits the side of his face, as if he were swatting a fly. Luke snatches at the break in his resolve.

“Resist him, Ben. He only seeks to use you. If you go to him, it will cost you everything.”

“Shut up!” Ben snaps, and Rey is unsure if he is talking to Luke or the unseen voice in his head. 

“Ben,” Han speaks at last, emerging from the shadows, looking so very tired, “you’re scaring us all.”

Ben laughs suddenly, an awful sound. His eyes keep flicking between Rey and Han. 

“You went straight to _him_ when you saw the base burning, Rey? You called for him, immediately. And of course, he came. He always comes for _you_.”

“I looked for you!” Rey cries, shaking her head like a mad woman. She doesn’t care that her hair is loose around her shoulders, and that she stands in a forest, bare-foot in her nightclothes. “I looked for you both-”

“But you found him instead,” Ben finishes with a sneer. “It’s a good thing, really. It’s poetic - you always wanted a father, and he never wanted _me!_ ”

Rey recoils as if she’s been slapped. Han steps forward, shoulder to shoulder with her, to face his son. 

“Enough, Ben. That isn’t true. We’ve had our struggles, you and I, nobody knows that better than me. But I _always_ wanted you! I will never claim that I was a good father. But I wanted to be. For you, Ben. Always for you.”

“That’s why you abandoned my mother? Abandoned both of us, to reclaim the glory days in that bucket of scrap. And why as soon as you met _her_ , miraculously you found the time to visit more?”

“I didn’t abandon Leia, we grew apart! That’s what people do, Ben. It got harder and harder to stick around when every time I looked at you, all I could see was your mother. I thought it was better that way. When she sent you here to this godforsaken planet, I wanted to come back! I wanted to start again.”

Ben shakes his head, his lip twitching with rage. 

“You’re lying!” He screams, and he sounds so young. So afraid. 

“What does it matter, Ben? The only thing that matters is I’m here now. We can end this, before it’s too late.”

Ben stops, shaking with suppressed fury. He lets out a great sigh, his head falling back, exposing the long, pale sliver of his throat to the moon. Rey can sense his exhaustion. He has turned, but he lingers close to the light. He’s still holding on. 

“Let’s end this, then,” Ben agrees, before snatching Luke’s lightsaber from him with the Force and, in one fluid movement, launches it javelin-style towards Han. Rey immediately reaches out with the Force to stop the saber’s trajectory, but she meets a wall of solid dark power. She grabs for it physically then, but only succeeds in burning her right hand. 

With a sickening hum, the saber pierces Han’s chest.

Rey feels it through the Force, as if she too has been run through. A howl tears through her lips, and she follows his body to the ground. 

“Han, Han,” she keeps repeating, and she wishes she could stop, but the only man who ever made her feel like family is fading away before her very eyes. She can’t help but call him back to her. 

It’s terrible to Rey that, in his final moments, Han looks scared and confused and hurt. Unable to speak, or unwilling, it doesn’t matter - all he manages are a few stringy gasps as his lungs fill with his own blood, before his head rolls into Rey’s palm, his eyes seeing nothing. She is not ashamed to admit that she weeps. She weeps like a child, suddenly 11 years old again, unsure if she is ever going to find a family. She’s noisy in the sudden quiet of the forest, Luke shocked into silence, his face smeared with tears. Even Ben, who by his own admission should have been pleased in his victory, seems stunned. Luke is the first to recover, of course. Rey can’t seem to tear her eyes away from Han’s face, imprinting the soft hazel of his eyes into her memory as they stare past her. Ben is frozen, the weight of what he has just done rooting him to the spot. 

Luke captures him in a Force hold which Ben doesn’t fight. 

Chewie, having split from Han when they entered the forest to cover more ground, chooses then to stumble upon the scene. His pained garble betrays his confusion, his disbelief. It takes his audible grief to stir Rey from within herself. She pulls herself up, feeling a thousand years old, the exhaustion set in her bone-deep. She must look a sight, hair dishevelled over her shoulders and stuck to her face, her cheeks red raw from scrubbing tears which won’t stop falling, her clothes dirtied and worn. She doesn’t care. Ben’s eyes are fixed on her from where Luke holds him. 

“Luke,” Rey says, but her throat closes around the rest of the sentence. 

“Chewie,” he addresses the distraught wookie, allowing Rey to gather herself. “We have a prisoner to transport to the resistance.”

“Terren survived,” Rey chokes out, “she’s on the Falcon. I’ll be Chewie’s co-pilot.”

Luke nods, then grimaces, nearly doubling over. Rey rushes to his side, pulling away his fingers from his side sticky with blood. It’s not fatal, but it must hurt like a son of a bitch. Rey steadies him, placing both palms flat over his own, and clears her mind with no small sense of relief. She feels the wound through the Force, and asks the flesh to knit back together, the skin closing over it as it heals, leaving only a faint pink mark which will fade with time. Luke manages a smile.

“You were always good at healing,” he murmurs, but Rey has no room in her heart to accept this compliment, this kindness. Luke stands straighter, and Rey can move away. 

“There are cuffs on the Falcon. I’ll bring them back. You need to save your strength,” Rey says, and then she is running into the night, stoically ignoring the body on the ground and the wookie who hunches over it, a huge hairy hand touching his shoulder gently. 

The day is beginning to break behind the Falcon where it is anchored, and Rey rummages through various compartments before she finds the thick, heavy-duty cuffs she was thinking of. She peeks her head around to check on Terren, and the unease in her gut settles slightly when she finds her asleep, if fitfully. Her chest rises and falls in a juddering motion, as if she is crying in her dreams. Rey has had enough tears tonight for a lifetime. 

She exits the ship, and begins to jog back into the forest when a shadow passes overhead. She cranes her neck and sees a ship she does not recognise heading directly for where she left the others. The uneasy feeling returns in full force, and she bursts into an all-out sprint back the way she came, but she could never beat a space shuttle on foot. When she returns, the clearing is in chaos. 

Chewie is firing off rounds from his blaster at the sky, the ship hovering in the canopy, its bay doors open. Rey can see a half-dozen First Order troops armed and prepared to fight in the belly of the ship. Ben has freed himself from Luke’s Force grip, and they are once again locked in battle. Ben is pulling his blows, Rey notes with some confusion, before the troops within the First Order shuttle open fire. Rey snatches up her blaster from the forest floor and fires a few rounds into the ship. A stormtrooper falls with a sickening thud, and Rey tries to ignore the reverberating impact of his death through the Force, and the fact that she caused it. She has never taken a life before. 

She switches to her staff, defending herself from the few blaster rounds they fire back rather than return fire. Ben inches closer to the ship with every swing of his saber. Rey’s blood boils.

“ _I’ll find you!_ ” She screams, realising his escape is inevitable. He tears his concentration away from Luke for a split-second in shock, looking over at Rey where she fumes. “ _You can’t hide from me!_ ”

He smiles cruelly. _A challenge?_ She hears his voice in her head one final time, low and guttural, before the ship breaks through the canopy to spirit him away into the cosmos. They hit light speed before they’ve even left the atmosphere. 

Rey is left with a pair of empty cuffs, and a hole in her soul so great in its magnitude she fears she will never be whole again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I’ll make it happy again soon. I just love writing tragedy sometimes.
> 
> Please let me know what you think of this chapter; in many ways it ran away with me.


	9. The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, my stars. This chapter, guys. 
> 
> Minor spoilers here for TLJ, some stolen dialogue and such for those of you who may not have seen it yet (if you haven’t go watch it what are you doing). 
> 
> Discussion of death, grieving, and so on are key elements to this chapter, you have been warned. 
> 
> I’ve thrown in a surprise character to sweeten the deal, though. Can you guess who?

Of course, Ben _can_ hide. He vanishes along with the First Order and takes a piece of Rey’s heart with him which she isn’t sure she ever wants back, leaving her in a world she no longer recognises as home. 

The sun, just beginning to rise at the time of Ben’s escape, has now risen fully. In the stark light of day things look worse. Much worse. 

Rey holds Ben’s broken lightsaber in both hands, her own staff abandoned somewhere in the forest, she can’t remember where exactly. Chewie sits next to Han, a great furry protector, while Rey and Luke in silent agreement pick through the rubble of the night before. Rey slides the saber into the blaster holster, and uses both hands to shift charred wood and brick, too exhausted to tap into the Force. She salvages what she can - pieces of cutlery, training equipment, overheated tech. She has no idea what is valuable enough to keep and what is broken enough to leave, so she guesses; her arms are soon laden with sentimental artefacts she picks up, as well as blackened tech in need of a clean. Luke, by contrast, leaves almost everything. His search is the hardest, and when they reach the smouldering remains of the shuttle, Rey is thankful that the fires have long burned through anything recognisable, machinery or otherwise. Standing before the black heap of ash, Rey struggles to feel anything at all. Her eyes have long run dry. She is entirely spent. 

Luke kneels before the shuttle remains for a long time, and Rey gives him some privacy. She returns to the Falcon with her finds, dumping them unceremoniously into a spare drawer. What had seemed essential as she discovered it now seems superficial. Terren is awake and sitting upright in her cot, looking as haunted and strung-out as Rey feels. They share a knowing look with one another, both too exhausted to offer the other any semblance of comfort. 

“The food store’s that way,” Rey points the way, not really expecting Terren to eat. Weak as she feels, Rey cannot imagine ever bringing food to her lips again. She suspects Terren feels the same. She heads the way Rey directs, if only to appear busy. 

Her arms feel empty as she walks back to Luke, and she lets them swing heavily by her sides, noting the gentle ache of her shoulders and neck down through her spine, thighs, and calves. Even the balls of her feet twinge with every step. 

Luke is beside Han when she finds them, busy wrapping him in some spare fabric he’s salvaged under Chewie’s watchful eye. His motions are detached, perfunctory, and when he struggles to lift Han’s body on his own Rey doesn’t hesitate to help him shoulder the weight, odd as it feels. Chewie leads the way back to the Falcon, while Rey tries desperately to empty her mind, to numb her arms; anything to stop herself from thinking of who she is carrying, and why she is carrying them. It is hard to conflate the empty shell on her shoulder with the mirthful man she knew. When they place him in the ship’s smuggling holds temporarily, it is easier for Rey to imagine he was never there at all - he escaped somehow, and traverses the stars alone, seeking misadventure. 

“Zon’s body,” Rey recalls suddenly, and Luke’s face darkens. 

“I’ll gather some firewood,” is all he says, and leaves the ship abruptly. Rey is left with the task of organising a Jedi burial, albeit a simplified version of the ceremony. She goes to fetch Terren, not only out of duty, but so that she is not alone when they recover Zon. Her eyes are distant, elsewhere as they all walk back towards the ruined academy base.

The sight of the pyre should be a beacon for peace, pride, and reflection, but it is too soon after the flames of anger and jealousy destroyed everything they loved to truly feel closure. Rey finds herself looking away from the fire, out towards the Great Lakes, wishing she could swim down to the bottom of their depths and remain there, always. Anything but merciless heat. 

Back on the Falcon, the preps for takeoff are unusually quiet. Only Terren is missing from the cockpit, having retired to her cot soon after they returned to the ship. Chewie and Rey sit at the pilot controls, while Luke is silent in the rear passenger seat. Rey doesn’t voice the fact that it feels wrong for Chewie to be on her left. It will always feel wrong for anyone but Han to be seated at these controls. 

“What’s our destination?” Rey asks, flipping switches needlessly simply for something to do.

“The Raddus,” Luke replies. “We have to warn the resistance of what has happened here; and I think a visit to my sister is necessary regardless.”

Rey feels a flutter of excitement in her belly in spite of herself. She has heard tales of the star cruiser, a purpose-built vessel, funded from the very last reserves of the resistance’s allies. It requires three support ships at any given time, and it burns through fuel decadently. It is the crown jewel of Leia’s fleet. Han had been the one to first inform Rey of the colossal ships, bursting with ill-concealed pride. He’d listed schematics, blueprints, and given her a run-down of the engines (so large they made Rey’s head spin). She had been enthralled by the otherwise dull recitation of mechanics, enchanted by the incantation of innovation. She’s wanted to see it ever since. Her excitement is nullified by the circumstances under which she will see it.

She enters the coordinates Chewie tells her, and relays a message requesting space be set aside in the hangar bay for a Freighter. The computer predicts that it’ll take them approximately 4 hours of light speed travel to catch up to where the ship is stationed in the Ileenium system. She knows Chewie is more than capable of steering the ship through light speed alone, but she’s reluctant to relinquish the controls. She doesn’t want to be alone with her thoughts right now. 

She props her feet up on the dashboard out of habit, waiting for the customary scolding. It doesn’t come. She’ll never hear it again. 

It brings on a harsh spike of emotion within her like a punch to the gut. She wants to claw her way inside of herself and dig it out from the root, this gnawing feeling of loss. Her temples begin to throb gently with the onset of a tension headache. She looks out of the front windows at all the stars shooting past like white lines. All of the lives they support, the planets they warm and nurture, reduced to nothing more than a smudge against the glass. Gone before it’s ever known. There is too much here for one person to ever fully comprehend. Her eyes unfocus as she stares, her mind travelling elsewhere as her headache grows to migraine proportions within the space of a few minutes. She gets the vague sense that something isn’t right, but she can’t place her finger on what exactly. 

She looks away from the window and jumps out of her skin. Ben sits alone in a meeting room, at the head of an empty table with thirty or so seats. His feet are propped up, mirroring Rey’s. 

“Are you alright, Rey?” Luke calls her attention, but the vision of Ben doesn’t fade or disappear. At the sound of Luke’s voice, in fact, Ben’s attention snaps up from the bare table to see Rey. He is equally as surprised, but he doesn’t show it. Rey _feels_ it peripherally, like she has cast a web and Ben is now caught in it, every emotion and inflection sending ricochets up through the thread which binds them. 

“I’m fine,” Rey manages to force out, scuttling out of the cockpit and into the first open door she sees. It’s a glorified cupboard, but that doesn’t seem to matter. She feels simultaneously the claustrophobic sensation of her environment, and the agoraphobic openness of Ben’s. 

“Are you?” Ben repeats Luke’s question, dark mirth colouring his tone. 

“What is this? Are you doing this?” Rey stage whispers. She realises that Ben is on the First Order ship which helped him escape Yavin. 

“I’m not even sure what _this_ is,” he refutes, shaking his head. “It appears to be a Force bond, but I can’t imagine why-”

“A Force bond?” Rey deadpans. 

“If you had paid more attention to the teachings of your Master and less time turning the hangar into a shuttle workshop, perhaps you’d know of such a thing.”

“After seeing where paying attention landed you, I’m less inclined to join suit,” Rey snaps irritably, and she feels Ben’s anger rise to meet hers. 

“Because you’re weak,” he spits, “and a fool. You’ve learned almost nothing from what happened.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Rey whispers with all the venom she can muster. “How do I stop it?”

“You can’t. It’ll only grow stronger the more it’s used.”

“You don’t seem particularly concerned,” Rey says accusingly, her heart fluttering in a panic. 

“It could be useful,” he admits, “I now have eyes in the resistance. I take it that’s where you’re running to?”

Rey’s silence is affirmation enough. 

“You’ve nowhere else to go. Of course you’re running to Leia.”

“I’ll tell Luke,” Rey threatens. Something in her twists at the thought of sharing this.

“And he will only confirm what I have told you. You cannot control this.”

In his head, he shares with her an imagined scene. Rey follows the thread as it shows her a vision of herself, isolated in a holding cell on the Raddus, imprisoned under direct order from General Organa. Even Luke has abandoned her, turning her away as a First Order spy. 

“He wouldn’t do that. Neither of them would.”

“You don’t know my mother,” Ben replies coolly. “You’re a liability, Rey. Why do you think a bond has formed between us?”

“The Force sees light remains within you,” Rey replies, and it is not hope speaking. In his tangent he revealed a glimmer of light at the mention of Leia. It is truth. 

“You’re just a child,” Ben dismisses her, though he shields himself carefully now. “You’ll expose the heart of the resistance to the First Order, and it’s no ones fault but your own.”

“Or,” Rey smiles coldly, “perhaps you will expose the First Order to me. That planet you’re orbiting - it’s Kuat, isn’t it?”

Ben stiffens, before flicking his wrist to close the shutters of the meeting room, plunging the room into almost total darkness. The loss of vision weakens the bond, until the only darkness Rey can see is the relative darkness of the cupboard aboard the Falcon. She feels secure in chalking that encounter up as a win for herself. 

The First Order was taking Ben to Kuat - but she couldn’t fathom why. She knew the planet had ties to the now-defunct Empire. It was likely they would pledge allegiance to the First Order. Above all, what worried Rey the most was that she was now essentially compromised. Whatever she could pick from Ben, he could do the same to her. Perhaps it would be sensible to spend the remainder of the war in a cell. 

***

The controls chirp happily when they’re a few minutes from the star cruiser’s location. Rey receives permission to dock the Falcon, and it’s second nature for her to quietly murmur to the controls as she eases them out of light speed, gentle encouragements and expressions of gratitude. Chewie is used to her bizarre behaviour in a pilot seat; Luke, however, is giving her strange looks. 

“Someone should go let Terren know we’ll be boarding soon,” Rey thinks aloud as she sets the automatic docking sequence. Luke wordlessly leaves to inform the grieving Nautolan of their imminent departure. 

The Raddus is magnificent to behold - even larger than Han had described it, glittering in the starlight, its design sleek and modern. The docking station is near the tail end of the ship, but Luke has permission (orders) to report to the bridge as soon as he boards the ship. Rey fully intends to invite herself along; the bridge is located at the swell of the ship’s bulk head. The view, she predicts, will be unparalleled.

The hangar bay opens at the rear of the Raddus like a gaping maw, swallowing the Falcon easily. Inside, the ship crawls with activity. Officials at every level check smaller ships which are already docked, as well as finalising preparations for the Freighter. It’s an extension of courtesy that the ship will be refuelled and checked for maintenance issues while moored. Rey opens the ramp doors slowly, suddenly overtly aware that a crowd awaits them on the other side of the ship. She doesn’t want to accidentally crush someone before she’s even set foot among the resistance. Luke exits first, flanked by Rey and Terren. Chewie refuses to leave the ship, his eyes rolling to the smuggling ports, and Rey doesn’t press for him to join them immediately. He sits in the cockpit, staring at the people surrounding the ship with no small amount of unease. Rey sympathises. She had considered the academy crowded when she first arrived on Yavin, and there were 24 other souls living on that base at the time. This ship spills into hundreds with ease. 

“Master Skywalker,” he is greeted immediately by an official who doesn’t bother to introduce himself. He extends a polite nod to Rey and Terren. “General Organa is expecting you on the bridge.” 

“Lead the way,” Luke says, uncomfortable with the stares which surround them. Rey often forgets the fame and mystery which surrounds the Skywalker bloodline. She knows Luke as little more than her master - he earned her respect through deeds, not through word of mouth. “Perhaps my associates would like to be shown their quarters?”

“Don’t you ruin this for me, Luke,” Rey jibes lightheartedly, and she’s surprised at the roll of laughter in the crowd, listening with baited breath to everything the newcomers say. Luke chuckles with them, and Rey remains with him as he is shown the way. Terren hesitates. 

“Forgive me, Master. I am tired.” 

“I can have someone show you where you can rest,” the official reassures her, and Terren peels away from the trio without a backward glance. 

Luke and Rey continue through the ship, and it is a fifteen minute walk from the hangar bay to the bridge. Most of it is spent in nondescript corridors and hallways, passing by awe-inspired rebels who often stop or stutter at the sight of a Jedi Master and his apprentice traversing the halls of a reputed resistance star cruiser. Rey begins to keep a tally of how many react to their presence. Luke wordlessly holds his fingers out, counting 22. An unladylike snort is startled out of her, too quick to be stopped by her clamping a hand over her mouth. She knows Luke is smiling, though he stares faithfully ahead. The official, for his part, doesn’t react to their informal exchange. 

The bridge is magnificent; it lives and breathes with activity, voices talking over one another as they read out information from the computers. Rey has never seen so much tech, and in such good working order, in her _life_. The room is organised in an oval shape, and upwards of five supercomputers operate within the space, holographs of the engine room, weapons facilities, medical bay; almost every facility aboard the ship sends readouts to the bridge. Each supercomputer is manned by at least three constant attendants, and dozens more flit between them, relaying messages and overseeing operations. Rey is hypnotised by the orderly way they go about their work, like bees in a hive. It ought to have been chaos, but it was more like dancing.

Everything grinds to a halt when the room realises who has just walked onto the bridge. A woman in dark grey stands up from where she is seated, gazing at the rolling screen of information as it appears on the hologram. Her eyes are familiar. 

“Leia,” Luke identifies her, his face crinkling in its warmth. She smiles a little sadly, opening her arms to him. They embrace and Rey can see their years of absence melt away. Leia’s face fits into the crook of Luke’s neck almost perfectly. 

“Luke, you’ve gotten old,” she says, smiling a mirror image of his own crinkling smile. Rey cannot seem to tear away her gaze from those eyes. Ben’s eyes. 

“You look exactly the same,” he admits, and she smacks him playfully. 

“Don’t lie to an old woman,” she replies, privately pleased. 

“I would never.”

She glows with happiness. “Who is your apprentice?”

Luke turns as if he had forgotten all about Rey, and she hides a smile behind her hand, stepping forward to meet Leia, the great general and leader of the resistance. 

“I’m Rey,” she says, holding out a hand for Leia to shake. “Just Rey.”

“Well, just Rey, I’ve heard a lot about you,” she replies, returning the handshake with pleasantly surprised gusto. “I only wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

The smile drops from Rey’s face instantly. Leia turns quickly to fuss over Luke more, before settling back into her chair to begin a briefing. 

“It was upsetting to receive your news, Luke,” she begins, “did my son give you no prior warning that he would turn?”

“There were... signs,” Luke acquiesces, “in my arrogance, I thought I could prevent Ben from turning any further to the dark. I was unaware that he had help.”

“Help?”

Luke lowers his voice. Though the control room has resumed its normal ambience, this information has strayed into sensitive territory.

“A dark user named Snoke was able to sway Ben to join his order.”

“Supreme Leader Snoke?” Leia is unsurprised. 

“The very same. By the time I realised, Snoke had already turned his heart.”

“I should have known. I should have sensed that something wasn’t right,” she declares, a haunted expression on her face. “Han’s death is because of my ignorance.”

“With all due respect, General Organa, the fault is no one’s,” Rey interjects, probably breaking a dozen codes of politeness when addressing a woman of Leia’s calibre, “darkness is a real and constant threat, and Ben has always been troubled more than most by its temptations. I knew him as a mentor, and as a friend, and I could see he struggled at times. If one is to blame, we are all equally under its obligation.”

“Spoken like a true diplomat,” Leia says appraisingly, a small smile playing at her lips. “You said you were a friend of Ben’s. He never really mentioned his friends very much to me. I’m glad he could count you among them, for whatever that’s worth.”

“A lot,” Rey says quietly, almost under her breath. She clears her throat, and repeats herself. “It’s worth a lot. To me.”

Fearing she’s given too much away, Rey ducks her head and tunes out the remainder of Luke and Leia’s conversation. They talk strategy, of how best to go about recovering Ben to the side of the light, and the resistance. Luke grows more withdrawn as the conversation lilts to a close. Leia is pretending not to notice; Rey refuses to believe that she would ever not pay attention to her brother’s emotional state. She lets him go eventually, assigning an officer to show them both to their temporary quarters. 

“The beds are strange, but we’re working on them,” she says in lieu of a true farewell, turning back to the first orderly waiting for her attention. She snaps instantly back into commander mode, all her soft edges hardening as she listens to the latest reports of the ship’s status. 

As soon as they are off the bridge, Rey turns to Luke.

“She’s amazing,” she breathes, feeling giddy.

“I agree,” Luke smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Rey feels the urge to reach out a hand, touch his shoulder, but it seems wrong. It’s too personal, in a place where privacy is a rare commodity. 

The orderly ends up separating them soon after. They send Rey down a particular corridor with a list of directions she struggles to follow, and hurries Luke away down a separate corridor. She can understand the deferential treatment. Even so far away from home and the desert, under the tutelage of a great Jedi Master, she still often feels like Rey from Nowhere. She heads down the corridor, trying to remember the correct order of left and rights she was told. There was supposed to be a marker of some kind when she was close - what was it, an electrical mains access point? The walls are all blank, uniform white and chrome. It’s very flashy, but it makes her eyes hurt if she stares at one place for too long. 

Alone in the seemingly endless maze of corridors, Rey grows mischievous. With a quick check to make completely sure no one’s around, she bursts into a mad sprint, suddenly full of energy. The narrow stretch compels her to run, the feeling of being alone intoxicating at last. She laughs as she reaches a corner, spinning around it too fast, too slow to stop herself from crashing into an equally surprised young man. His arms reach out to steady her instinctively, but she drags them to floor anyway with her momentum. The crash echoes down the hallway, but nobody comes to check on them. Rey peels herself off the floor, and rushes to check on the poor soul. He’s sitting upright, which is good, and his eyes are clear and focussed on her. Also good. She didn’t cause any concussions today. 

“I’m so sorry,” she begins to chatter, standing and pulling the young man to his feet. He’s dressed strangely, like he doesn’t belong on the ship. More of a traveller than a member of the resistance. She talks until she realises he can’t get a word in edgeways. “I’m sorry. I’m Rey. What’s your name?”

“Finn,” he breathes with a sigh, reaching out a hand which she takes gratefully and shakes firmly. “Just Finn.”

“I’m sorry, Finn,” she babbles. 

“You’ve apologised enough, I think.” He looks her up and down, realisation dawning on his face. “You’re the Jedi apprentice? With Luke Skywalker?”

“That’s me,” she says with a shy smile. His face splits into a grin, his brown eyes gleeful. 

“Oh stars, a Jedi just knocked me over! That’s amazing. It’s an honour to meet you,” he says, shaking her hand again. Rey laughs at his earnestness. 

“I’m not a Jedi yet. I’m still in training,” she corrects him, and he laughs like it doesn’t matter. 

“Close enough,” he declares. “Where you headed, Master Rey?”

She laughs again, full-bellied, at his misnomer. 

“Just Rey, thanks, and I’m a little lost. Just trying to find room 223,” she says. 

“Oh, that’s easy. Follow me, _Rey_ ,” he says the name like he’s testing it out. She decides she likes Finn. 

“What do you do here, Finn?” She asks as he leads her down a selection of corridors. He considers his reply carefully.

“I... I’m a defector, actually. I used to be a stormtrooper. FN-2187.”

“Oh,” is all Rey can think to say, “What made you think of betraying the First Order?”

“It was an easy choice, really,” he shrugs, “I didn’t want to kill innocent people. I knew I could never do it. I never have. So, my only option was defecting, to be honest. The next time we captured one of the resistance, I was on the next TIE Fighter out of there with them.”

“That’s amazing, actually,” Rey insists. “You must have been in such a difficult position.”

“Not for long,” he says with a smile, and stops with a flourish. “Well, Rey, this is the room you were looking for.”

The room has a standard bunk and a minute fresher in the corner, as well as a change of clothes already folded on the sheets. 

“Where’s the mess hall?” She asks, reluctant to say goodbye to Finn so soon.

“I was heading there when you bumped into me,” he says, “why don’t you follow me?”

“Of course,” she giggles, motioning for him to lead the way with a regal hand. He marches exaggeratedly for a few paces, and Rey can’t help but burst into peels of laughter. It feels good. 

She sits with Finn during dinner, piling her plate high with every kind of food on offer. She surprises Finn by eating all of it, and regales him with tales of the desert on Jakku, and the abysmal rationing situation there. The conversation move swiftly onto ships, something Rey shares with Finn in terms of enthusiasm. He is almost as knowledgable as her about the resistance fleet, though his information on the First Order is eye-watering. They sit together talking until long after the hall has cleared out, and Rey laughs more in that sitting than she has for months on Yavin. Her cheeks ache from smiling when Finn admits he has to go meet a friend. 

“Who is it?” She enquiries politely. 

“Poe Dameron,” he replies, and Rey nearly spits out her drink.

“ _The_ Poe Dameron?” She repeats incredulously. “Legendary pilot?”

“That’ll be him,” Finn smiles. “He’s the one who helped me bust out of the First Order.”

“I have to meet him,” Rey insists, though a yawn interrupts her sentence. Finn looks at her with sympathy. 

“He’ll still be here tomorrow, Rey. First thing, I promise. You should probably go get some rest.”

She makes a show of protesting, but her body is screaming for sleep the moment Finn suggests it. They wish each other a goodnight, and Rey surprises herself by finding her room on the first try. 

In the dark quiet of her bunk (which does feel strange for reasons she can’t quite place her finger on, kudos to Leia) she struggles to find sleep. She’s so tired she could cry, but every time she begins to drift off the smell of smoke fills her nostrils and an alarm rings in her ears. She’s transported back to Yavin, the building about to collapse around her, she has to get out. She needs _air_.

For the second time that day her heads begins to pound with the onset of a headache, and she waits for the peculiar feeling of opening her eyes even though she’s staring straight ahead. She doesn’t need to turn her head to know that she’ll see Ben. She hears him sigh, and she guesses that he’s also struggling to sleep.

“You’re thinking too loud,” he accuses her first, his deep rumble thick with slumber. Perhaps he’s just woken. 

“Who’s fault is that?” She fires back, whispering even though she knows no one can hear her. 

“Mine, of course,” he sounds prideful of that fact. Rey is disgusted. “I see you haven’t informed Skywalker of our... connection.”

Rey doesn’t answer. She’s trying to burn a hole in the space above her bunk with her mind. 

“You won’t,” he predicts, like she’s so easy to read. “You still harbour hope.”

“I’m not in the mood for this right now,” Rey sighs. 

“Neither am I,” Ben agrees evenly, and she finally turns in bed to look at him. She sees him as if he were laid beside her in her own bunk, but she’s aware that he’s alone in his. His dark hair is tangled, his face shrouded in shadow. She can only just make out his eyes boring into hers, intense in the darkness. He lays on his stomach, one hand under his pillow. A protective way to sleep. He isn’t wearing a shirt. She stops that thought dead in its tracks before she can wonder anymore about what lurks beneath his bedsheets. It’s strangely intimate seeing him like this, like she’s peeled a layer back. 

“Why did you do it?” She asks finally, realising this connection isn’t going to fade anytime soon. 

“Do what?” He replies, and if Rey could reach out and strangle him, she would. She’s tempted to try anyway.

“You know what,” she insists. 

“Say it.”

“Why did you kill your father?” She asks after a long silence. “You had a father, who loved you, and you killed him.”

“Yes, I did,” Ben agrees calmly. Rey feels anything but calm. “Because he had no part in my future. The one I wanted to make. He was a necessary sacrifice.”

“That’s not all,” Rey accuses him. “Why did you hate him?”

“I don’t hate my father.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Yes, you do. You’re holding back. You’re afraid, even now.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Ben,” this at least she knows to be true.

“I don’t want your pity.”

“What do you want?” Rey asks him, growing frustrated. She sees him smile against his pillow to have rattled her so.

“You.” He says it so flippantly Rey’s heart stutters, and her breath stops. “I want you to join me, Rey.”

“I would never...”

“You would never betray Luke. Not yet. You haven’t seen him as I see him. But you will. And I will be here when you do, Rey.” _I’ll always be here_ , she half expects him to say after, but he falls silent. 

They look at each other, simply looking, for a long time. Rey can almost fool herself that they’re in the same bed. Under the cover of darkness, it doesn’t feel wrong that she can’t muster the hatred for him she feels in the daylight. It feels okay that she can reach out a hand from under her bedsheets, and card it through his hair like he really is beside her. Like it was someone else on Yavin who caused all that hurt and destruction. He leans into her touch, his eyes fluttering closed for a half second. She is amazed by how real the bond makes this feel. By how much she wants this to be real. 

He sighs contentedly, and Rey finds herself matching his breathing as it slows and evens out, and they fall asleep within seconds of each other, the bond fizzling out not long after. It holds on, and Rey to wakefulness, just long enough for her to feel Ben reach for her in sleep. His hand is large and warm against her waist where he drapes it. She falls asleep knowing he won’t be there when she wakes up, and she quashes the feeling of despair which rears its head at the thought. 

In the morning she’ll regret this. But for now, Rey sleeps knowing million of light years away, Ben Solo is thinking of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this turned out to be a long-ass chapter. I couldn’t wait till the next one to include our little force-bond end scene, though. Sleepy Ben Solo is my favourite Ben Solo. 
> 
> I have a plan for whereabouts this fic is actually going, guys, but bear with me while I figure it out. It’ll start to become clearer in the next few chapters (I hope) where I’m headed, but of course you all already know where I’m headed ;) it’s the how’s, why’s, and where’s to sort. I’m getting there!
> 
> Looking forward to the comments on this one.


	10. The Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but I have an offering to make up for it: two chapters!

Han’s funeral is a dismal affair. Rey woke alone, as she expected, though disappoint still coloured her morning. She met Finn at breakfast, and piled her plate high once more with the vast variety of foods on offer. She cleared her plate once more, this time more to try and push away the tight feeling in her stomach as the time drew closer. Shovelling the last piece of food in her mouth, Finn watched her carefully. She was careful not to meet his eyes for too long. He accompanies her to the bridge, where they will pay their collective respects to Han’s services over the years as an ally to the resistance. 

Rey is keen for the whole business to be over as soon as she arrives, wearing clothes which are not her own, which smell different to the earthy tang of Yavin. Her skin feels scrubbed raw by the overly-enthusiastic fresher, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes are heavy, ringed with shadows in her struggle for sleep. Not to mention her unexpected visitor. Finn clasps his hands in front of him, standing to attention - a side effect of his training under the First Order. The bridge is crowded, full of officials and those who knew Han as a legend, a myth. Rey is there as someone who knew him as a man. Leia begins the proceedings, starting with speeches detailing Han’s bravery and omitting his instances of cowardice. She explains how loved he was, neglecting to mention the people he hurt throughout the course of his life. This service, Rey realises, is less for herself and Leia, and more for creating a facade of Han. It isn’t enough that he was a hero to Rey, that he saved her in too many ways to list. He must be a hero to the resistance, a source of hope in dark times. Rey must let go of him. 

Leia meets Rey’s gaze from across the room, and she understands. There lies resignation to responsibility, the mark of a leader. Rey nods minutely. Leia continues spinning tale after tale, ending the service with a heartfelt call to arms and for preparedness. Rey finds much of the room has been brought to an emotional response. Her eyes remain stubbornly dry. 

“So that’s what the Raddus looks like from the inside,” Ben interrupts her inner thought procession suddenly. Rey twitches, but otherwise masks her surprise. 

She didn’t even feel a headache that time. Is this a sign that the bond is growing stronger, as Ben predicted? She’s loathe to think of him being able to pop up in her space completely undetected, at any time. She swivels her eyes to the left, where Ben sits languidly in his private chamber. The bed is made, and he’s washed and dressed entirely in black. A helmet sits next to him, also black, with a full visor and silver mouth grate. It’s cold and inhuman. 

_Why are you here?_ She asks. 

“I don’t choose when the bond connects us,” he explains, and Rey thinks she sees him roll his eyes. Gone is the earnest man who helped her sleep in the small hours of the morning. 

_You look ready for something,_ she changes the subject. On the bridge, Leia orders a ceremonial firing of the ship’s artillery. 

“You don’t look sad enough to be at a funeral,” Ben counters, neatly dodging the implied question. 

_You’re present, too, now,_ she reminds him. _I’m surprised you aren’t dancing a jig._

The image of Ben bursting into song and dance pops into her head of its own accord, and Ben radiates distaste as the image filters into his head by association. 

“I already told you I don’t hate Han,” he insists. 

_Hated,_ she corrects scathingly. _He isn’t around anymore for you to actively feel anything towards him._

“You’re wrong,” he says. “He is with me, always. When I close my eyes, I see him. When I look into the shadows, there he lurks. I thought by killing him I would be free, but I’ve opened myself to his presence more than ever.”

Rey fails to sympathise. _Perhaps the term you’re searching for is guilt._

“I don’t regret what I did. I wish it had had the effect I desired.”

_I never mentioned regret._ Rey feels as though she is explaining these emotions to a child. _Besides, I think it’s fair that you be haunted by your actions. Perhaps you will understand the consequences._

“I understand them.” Ben is growing irate. “What I don’t understand is why you cannot see how misplaced your hope is among these _people_.”

He refers to the crowd on the bridge. Beyond the toughened glass, the guns continue to fire their respect for Han Solo. Rey lashes out, desiring to hurt and cause pain.

_Nobody will pay you this respect when you die,_ she says. _You will never be the man your father was._

Ben falls silent at her harsh words, half-truths though they are. He detects her hesitation, finds it, and twists. 

“Nobody except you, Rey from Nowhere. Even when you have so much reason to hate me, you cannot. The light within you prevents it. It is your greatest weakness.”

_Or,_ she counters, _my greatest strength. I know you don’t believe in what you say. You were born of conflict, and conflict now defines you. If your ambition is great enough for you to cause such destruction, then why do you now find yourself split across the galaxy?_

“If I am split, then so are you. Tell me, apprentice: where is Luke?” Rey realises he is not in attendance at the service. “Why is he not paying his respects to an old friend?”

The guns fall silent, and Leia clears the bridge. As the crowd filters away, Rey is left along with Finn and Leia. The connection has closed as quietly as it opened, and Rey feels relieved that she doesn’t have to answer the questions he left her with. She turns to Leia instead.

“Have you seen Luke this morning?” 

Leia’s face falls. “I had hoped to find a better way of telling you, but I suppose that doesn’t much matter really in our current situation. Luke’s gone. A small shuttle was reported missing in the early hours of the morning, and Luke cannot be located on board this vessel.”

Rey instinctively reaches for the Force. There isn’t the faintest trace of Luke’s signature which she can feel. It is as if he has vanished into thin air.

“He’s closed himself off from the Force,” Rey says, “I can’t feel him at all.”

Leia looks sad, but resigned. Rey, for a moment, thinks wonderingly how she remains so strong under the weight of all she must bear. She wishes she were able to compartmentalise her emotions so easily, to file away her grief and anger to deal with at a later time. She wishes she were older, and wiser, and more experienced, so that she would know what to do when her world seems to crumble beneath her feet. 

“I wouldn’t worry,” Leia declares, a fumbled attempt at comfort. Of course Rey will worry. It’s one of her most-honed skills. “Luke has been tested of late. He may need time to come to terms with what has happened.”

_I need time, too_ , Rey wants to scream, _I have been tested just as much._

“How long do you think he will need?” Rey says instead, surprising herself by how level she sounds even to herself. “I need to continue my training if we’re to stand against the new threat.”

“Patience. We aren’t expecting any imminent attacks, Rey. We can afford to give Luke some time.”

“But-” she cuts herself off. She will not whine to the leader of the resistance. Finn takes a step forward then, infinitely calm and understanding. 

“Ma’am, I believe Rey would be a useful addition to my team, considering her personal relationship with Solo,” he says. 

“Proactive thinking, Finn. But don’t ever call me ma’am.” She smiles.

“Yes, ma- yes, General.” He bows, embarrassed, and then grows flustered by his embarrassment. Rey takes him forcefully by the arm and drags him away, beating a hasty retreat from Leia’s gentle laughter. 

Once off the bridge, laughter bubbles up within her, also, and she watches with glee as the tips of Finn’s ears turn beet red in response to her gentle ribbing.

“She’s intimidating,” Finn defends himself, and Rey laughs in his face. 

“That’s her job,” she gasps, before calming slightly. “What’s this team of yours you’re so eager for me to join?”

“Oh, I don’t have one. My role here is pretty unique, and I figured Leia is so busy she wouldn’t _know_ for a fact I work pretty much on my own. But now you can work with me.”

Rey considers this. “Pretty smart, actually.”

“No need to act so surprised.”

***

They’re arguing with each other over the correct classification of a TIE space superiority fighter, naturally, when the alarms sound. Rey is flung instantly back to Yavin, even though this alarm sounds nothing like the archaic tolling of the bells from that night. 

Finn reaches for his weapon instantly, even though he can’t see the threat, and Rey longs to hold a saber in her hand rather than the comparatively puny blaster. The only way she could was if Luke had left his saber behind, which she knew he would never do. Still, she checks via the Force, and is slightly horrified that she can feel it sitting by his bed in his room, undisturbed. 

“Come with me,” Rey barks, “I need to get to Luke’s room.”

Finn leads her carefully along the corridors as they fill with resistance fighters suiting up for a fight. She notes that the pilots wear distinctive orange jumpsuits. Rey retrieves the saber, the weight of the handle just slightly off-balanced in her small hand, but she hooks it to her belt nonetheless. Luke’s room is sad. The bed has been made, as if he were never even there. There are no clues left as to where he might have gone. That he has abandoned his weapon is not a good sign. 

“The bridge.” Rey says, and Finn nods in agreement. If they are going to find out what is going on and how they can help, they’ll start there. 

They run back into the hallway just as the ship’s thrusters kick it up a notch suddenly. They lurch towards the wall as they readjust themselves to the new travelling speed, picking their way amongst disorganised troops all scrambling to their battle stations. Finn stops unexpectedly, grabbing hold of a pilot in an orange jumpsuit passing them in the opposite direction. 

“Poe?” He says, and Rey realises with a start that she is meeting Poe Dameron, legendary resistance pilot. He’s handsomer than she imagined, she thinks absurdly. In crisis mode her brain throws her for a loop.

“Finn!” He hurriedly embraces him, nodding to Rey as he does so. “Our newest Jedi recruit I’m guessing. Pleasure to have you aboard.”

“What the hell is happening?” Finn demands.

“It’s the First Order. We weren’t expecting an attack so soon, but... here we are. They’ve brought the whole fleet. I need to get to my damn ship, and you guys need to find somewhere safe to hunker down. I’ll catch you later, okay?” He shouts the last part of the sentence, already rushing away, helmet tucked under his arm. 

“He seems nice,” Rey says, for a lack of anything else to say. “But we’re still going to the bridge, right?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

The bridge is in chaos, and Rey quickly realises why. With the panoramic glass shields, she can see the line of star destroyers aimed directly at the Raddus. They’re laying on a continuous stream of fire, but the cruiser is keeping just out of range. Enough for the blasts to be ineffective against the shields. The black metal fleet hover intimidatingly nearby, however, maintaining chase. 

“Why aren’t we jumping to light speed?” Rey wonders aloud.

“They tracked us through light speed,” a passing officer declares. 

“Is that even possible?” Finn exclaims. 

“It must be,” Rey decides, spotting Leia surrounded by captains and officials. She marches over. 

“General, they’re deploying TIE fighters now,” someone calls out over the din. 

“General,” Rey says, hating the note of fear in her voice. “I need to find Luke. We need him. I can’t be of use to you like this.”

“Not now, Rey.” Leia snaps, turning instantly away. Rey knows better than to be hurt. 

The distinctive whirl of the starfighter’s engines betray their arrival. They spin maddeningly near to the Raddus, so close she can almost see the pilots. Leia’s eyes narrow. 

“Why aren’t our fighters out there already?” She calls.

“The hangar containing our fleet has been destroyed, General. We have no fighters.”

Leia looks worried, then. It lasts only a moment, until the First Order starfighters swing back into view. Finn’s gutted expression betrays his worry over Poe. When they had left him, he’d been heading for the hangar bay. Rey is too scrambled to feel for him through the Force, and can offer him no greater reassurance than her hand, vice-like, around his wrist as they stand helpless and useless amidst chaos. Rey looks closely this time to see who the pilots are. She only expects to recognise one. Most wear helmets, but she notes with a sickening feeling in her stomach that the leader of the crew, flying a TIE silencer, wears the helmet from her Force connection with Ben. It is his ship, alongside two others, who aim directly for the bridge. 

“Evacuate!” Rey screams, rushing Finn away from the window, but there is no chance for escape. She turns her head to watch as, even while the silencer pulls away after a moment’s hesitation, the remaining two fighters’ aim is true. Their shots pierce both the shields and the hull of the Raddus explosively, exposing the crew to the hostile environment of open space. 

Rey acts quickly, pulling from the Force as easily as drawing breath. It doesn’t fight her as she opens up a protection bubble, expanding it to capture as many of the free-floating crew members as she can before her strength fails her. Finn, close by her, is protected, as well as Leia and a few more high-ranking officials. Rey tries not to dwell on the souls she must leave behind as she claws her way back to the bridge doors, dragging her entourage close behind her. The crowd behind it hastily opens them, and all it takes is a second for Rey to _throw_ , with all of her might, those she has saved into the remains of the ship before her. Her hold on the Force breaks just as she slams her hand on the release to seal the doors, gasping for breath. She has managed to save only 5, including herself, Leia, and Finn. She cannot stop herself from looking through the gap of glass in the door at the terrible sight of all those people - good, honest, fighting people - simply static, as if asleep. 

The TIE fighters circle the bodies like vultures, Ben’s not among them, and Rey feels her anger curdle within her. As her allies recover around her, helped by the surviving crew members, she sees one more star fighter pilot revolving around the debris. They do not wear a helmet, and a split-second of eye contact is all it takes for Rey to recognise the flash of pale-blonde hair and the cruel, unforgiving blue eyes. 

It’s Aleric.


	11. Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, more of Ben’s perspective. I love writing him.

Ben wakes in the dark, and not for the first time is confused about his surroundings. Why is the night so close? Why can’t he see the forest? It hits him that he is no longer on Yavin, that he destroyed that place and the boy who had lived there along with it. He’s aboard the Finalizer. He’s Kylo Ren now.

A faint sheen of sweat coats his face, neck, and chest as he lays perfectly still in his bunk, staring up towards the flat grey ceiling and decisively not to his right, where he can _feel_ Rey laying. He resists the urge to sigh. This is the second time in as many nights that the Force has connected them this way. He had hoped for a night alone to dwell on what transpired earlier that day with his mother, as he feels reflection is much-needed. He’s barely had chance to stop for a moment since coming within Snoke’s sphere of influence. Not even 48 hours aboard the Finalizer and already he feels unrecognisable. Beside him, Rey’s breathing pattern suggests that she is still asleep, and Ben is content to recline in this liminal moment between sleep and wakefulness, merely feeling the familiar sensation of her close to him. He’s reminded of Yavin, but not of the stifling routine and endless loneliness. Rey exists in a place all of her own, separate from the hatred. 

That is, until she wakes up. He feels it when she does; there’s a sudden stiffness to her spine as she, too, hesitates to acknowledge that once again they have found themselves here. He finds himself holding his breath. She releases it for him, rolling over huffily to stare him in the face. Her hair is undone, the soft brown tresses dangling down to his pillow as she props herself up on her elbow. Her cheek has pillow creases in it. Her eyes are half-lidded, but alert. Ben finds that the only thought running through his head is how gut-wrenchingly beautiful she is.

“So, we meet again,” she says, a weak attempt at humour. He doesn’t laugh. 

“It appears that way, yes,” he replies, dragging a hand over his face as if he is inconvenienced by the appearance of a beautiful young woman in his bed. 

“I’m not doing this on purpose,” she feels the need to clarify. 

“I know,” he says, and is that surliness he hears in his voice? “Neither of us are.”

“I wish it would stop.”

“Agreed,” he says, though it feels like a lie in the dark. The previous night had been some of the best sleep he’d ever had. The admission doesn’t sit well with him. 

A few moments of silence pass between them comfortably, and Ben grows bold enough to properly look at Rey. He can see, through the amount of her surroundings he is permitted to see through the connection, that she is still on the Raddus. The attack feels so very far away. He doesn’t know whether it’s appropriate to ask after the condition of his mother. Luckily for him, Rey brings it up for him.

“I met Leia,” she says into the darkness, simply for something to say. He wonders if she can feel his gratitude through the bond. 

“I’d kill to have seen that.” Rey doesn’t appreciate his underhanded joke, breezing straight through as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

“I like her.”

Ben sighs. “Of course you do.”

“Oh, shut up,” she scolds, but her smile is gentle. He also feels the absurd need to smile. 

“How is she?” He says, with what he hopes is the right amount of wry spin to appear simultaneously unconcerned. 

“Fine,” Rey says quickly, “no thanks to you, of course.”

Ben nods, allowing this information to sink it rather than reply. 

“I don’t understand how you could have a mother like that and still choose this path.”

“You’ve never had a mother, so I don’t suppose you would,” he says, without really thinking. He catches himself too late. She’s already turned her back on him. The connection remains, however. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re right,” she says, and he can’t help but flinch at the thread of hurt in her voice. “I can’t understand. I don’t understand. But I won’t stop fighting for you, Ben. I’ve made up my mind.”

“It’s not Ben anymore,” he corrects her, though his heart isn’t really in it. As much as the crew of the Finalizer is under strict orders not call him by his ‘dead name’, he’s certain Rey could call him anything and he would answer. “It’s Kylo. Kylo Ren.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re _called_ ,” Rey scoffs, turning back to face him. Her eyes are dry, which is a relief. “You’re the same pompous apprentice from Yavin. You have a lot to atone for. But mark my bloody words, _Ben_ , I’ll drag you back to the light kicking and screaming if I have to.”

“Pompous?” Ben murmurs, and something in his confused expression startles a laugh out of Rey. She quickly sobers, as if remembering something.

“Ben...” she begins, unsure. Something in his chest tightens in anticipation of what she is about to say. “I saw Aleric.”

He shouldn’t be shocked, but his chest contracts as if in reaction to this unremarkable news. Perhaps it was simply his revulsion at being forced to work in close quarters with the rogue apprentice with her sharp tongue and sharper insights once again. 

“Yes. She escaped to the First Order before me.” He closes his eyes, thinking back to that night. After he’d entered the shuttle, he’d had to have been physically restrained from attacking the harpy where she sat demurely, surrounded by stormtroopers. She’d instantly rankled against him, and were it not for the commanding voice of Snoke in both their heads, he would have tossed her to the earth below. He still considered spacing her at times. 

“I see,” Rey sounds just as enthused as he feels about the matter. “I woke up after the alarm had already sounded. Everyone else had gone, and if I hadn’t woken when I did, I’d have been inside the building when it fell. I just assumed... everyone else was...”

“She saved your life, in a twisted way,” Ben admits. “Entirely unintentionally, of course. She meant to kill you. She placed you into sleep. Lucky for you, her control over the Force is easily swayed, and your sensitivity is particularly potent.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Yes, you can,” he throws an arm over his eyes. He feels... stable. In spite of all the ways the universe has made it a personal mission to send him on a one-way spiral off the deep end, here, in this dark room while he should be sleeping and not thinking of the light-user, he’s calm. 

Her fingers are warm when they pry his arm away from his face. She doesn’t let go, and he doesn’t move away. He remembers the feel of her fingers through his hair, and warmth blooms within him. He’s blushing. He waits for the next step, whatever that is. He hopes, perhaps unwisely. He _yearns_.

“You have the same eyes,” she murmurs, her own heavy-lidded, lips parted, light scant over her right cheek, throwing her largely into shadow. “Beautiful.”

Desire, thick and persistent, emerges among his warring emotions. He feels trapped by her gaze, as if her hands were around his neck and not his wrist. His cheeks are on fire, the blush travelling downwards along his neck to spread across his chest. He feels a fool. 

“Don’t lie to me,” he rasps. Her eye flickers. 

“I never lie to you,” she says, and through the amplification of her skin against his, he knows this to be truth. He can feel his pulse in his ears like a beating drum. If his nose started to bleed, he would be unsurprised. He’s as tightly wound as a stringed instrument. 

She leans forward, her lips perilously close to dangerous territory, when like an elastic band stretched too tight, the bond snaps them apart. The connection is broken. He’s once again alone. He lays for a second more, feeling her warmth ebb. There are four white marks fast fading from his wrist. If he turns it slightly, he’ll see the fifth. He counts to five, then to ten. He makes it to one hundred and seventy three before he gives up on sleep altogether, and goes to find Aleric to pummel. 

***

Snoke demands an audience in the morning, which he was expecting. His hesitation in the field will need answering for. The leader of the resistance lives, and Luke Skywalker has vanished from both their radars. As long as both exist, hope lives in the galaxy.

His first audience with Snoke was enlightening. The sunken, decaying creature sat atop the throne didn’t match up with Ben’s idea of the figure of Snoke, the dark-user and Master. The thought was quickly plucked out of his head to be scorned by the Supreme Leader. Painfully. Ben learned that pain was a tool which he must grow comfortable utilising, and often. He learned that fear was to be exploited. That power was drawn from within, yes, but that it could also be taken from those around you. He left the throne room with a cracked crystal and instructions to forge for himself a new beginning, the start of which would be a weapon. 

He wears that weapon on his belt as he strides confidently and unashamedly into Snoke’s throne room, his failure worn like his mask. He has prepared himself for the worst of Snoke’s wrath.

“Kylo Ren,” he greets him, and Ben kneels dutifully. The praetorian guards encircle his throne, their bright red the signal of nature warning of danger. 

“Master,” he replies, careful to keep his voice inflection-less. Any sign of wavering and Snoke would latch onto it like a leech and drain him until he no longer has the strength for thought either way. His solution to most things.

“Your task...” he begins, and Ben instinctively throws his shields up. “Was not entirely successful. I am not interested in dwelling on your failures, today, Ren. Tell me - what is your connection to the Jedi Rey?”

He had not prepared for this. He doesn’t have time for fabrication, and so chooses instead to leave out as much as he can without appearing suspicious.

“We trained together under Luke. She is strong with the Force, and the sole Jedi survivor from Yavin of any noteworthy power.”

“Yes. I wonder how that came to pass?” He asks in that inane way Ben has noted of his. 

“My father, Han Solo, allowed her to escape. She used his ship.”

“You had chance before then to extinguish her. Why didn’t you?”

This is unknown territory. He feels exposed suddenly, as if stripped bare. 

“I was weak then, Master, but not now,” he settles on. 

“I’m glad to hear it. I have a new task for you. Skywalker has vanished, abandoning his apprentices in their time of need. They are the sole connection to finding him which we possess. I require of you that you find the girl Rey and bring her to me, that I might pluck from her mind what knowledge we may need to locate and eliminate the last of the Jedi.”

Ben’s mouth is dry. Snoke takes his silence as acceptance. 

“You may leave as soon as you are ready.”

“Immediately, Master,” he manages, then. 

His preparations are short; most of what he will need is already with him at all times anyway. His ship is being prepped for a deep space journey as he waits in his quarters and considers how he ended up here. How very different from what he was expected to be. He isn’t fair-haired and self-righteous like Luke. He lacks Leia’s determination and grit. Han only passed along his emotional turmoil, it seemed. He has become a Frankenstienian amalgamation of all of their worst qualities, unstable, volatile, and prone to fits of anger. How had they not seen this coming? Snoke is turning him into a Jedi killer. 30 years previously, Luke had attempted to restart the Jedi from scratch. His destiny is blurry, even to him, and he feels constantly the outside pressures as they attempt to mold him into something he has no desire to be. He never felt at peace among the teachings of the Jedi, but neither now does the cloak of the Sith sit right around his shoulders. He surges forward in his uncertainty still, promised that if he just wait a little longer, if he just keep faith (in what?), he will be rewarded with life-altering clarity. He’s tired. 

“Sir,” comes the request for entry into his rooms. He opens the door, standing as the black-clothed official arrives to inform him his ship is prepared for the journey. He’s welcome to inspect it. He knows he won’t. Suddenly, all he wants is to leave. 

In the hangar bay awaits his prize for turning to Snoke. His personalised command shuttle, equipped with sensor jammers and shield projectors for the express purpose of subtlety, as well as being heavily armoured should Ben find himself in a skirmish. He had never had opportunity to be awed by the ship’s on Yavin as the Jedi lifestyle demanded simplicity and even poverty. Their shuttles and even their fighters were hand me downs of hand me downs, barely running were it not for the help of Rey’s proclivity for mechanics. The First Order, in all its unimaginable wealth and influence, has access to an arsenal which regularly gives him pause. The unveiling of his ship was such a moment. On this mission it will be running on reduced abilities to enable Ben to pilot and regulate the ship solo, but working under a full staff the shuttle runs like an intricate switchboard. He hasn’t had chance to familiarise himself with the ship prior to this mission, and he’s glad that even though he’s limited somewhat, he can discover the ship for himself, entirely on his own. The First Order, Ben finds, is overcrowded. 

He boards the ship, slightly unnerved by all the chrome and reflective surfaces. He makes unintended eye contact with himself several times over on his way to the pilot’s bay. There are three seats available, but Ben needs only one. He chooses the left-hand chair without dwelling on the fact. The ship hums to life under his touch, and instantly the mission brief loads across the screen, reiterating in greater detail what Snoke has already informed him. Retrieve the girl, unharmed, and return to the First Order base for interrogation. All other persons expendable. Lethal force allowed. _Encouraged_ , Ben thinks wryly. The last known coordinates of the Raddus load into his navigation system. A team had been dispatched to tail them after their previous attack, however Leia’s underlings were more skilled than the First Order gave them credit for. They had recognised the advanced capabilities of the First Order’s tracking technology as being able to track them through light speed, and scrambled together a team who, acting under mostly guesswork, had infiltrated the First Order’s fleet to disable the tracker. In simple terms, they had slipped from under their noses with laughable ease. Leia had probably laughed, Ben imagines. Aloud, and with gusto. To say that Snoke had been displeased was an understatement.

He considers, briefly, attempting to access the bond with Rey to glean from her their location. How will he keep from her his true purpose, when as much as he can see into her, she has the power to look right back? He dismisses the idea as flawed, though a voice in the back of his mind tells him to reconsider whether it is his own personal entanglement with the target which prevents him from exploiting their connection. It sounds like Han. He sets the navigation system to travel to the coordinates on his screen. He’ll do things the traditional way, ignoring the deep chuckle reverberating through his very being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken a bit of an artistic liberty with the plot of TFA and TLJ, which I hope will become clear? Semi-clarified? Fingers crossed, anyway. Enjoy!


	12. For the Taking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I am so sorry about the wait for this chapter! I’ve started back up at Uni now and things are in full swing so my writing has to take a back seat unfortunately, but I’m committed to seeing this through. You might have to wait longer between chapters, is all. 
> 
> A long chapter, this one! Back to Rey’s POV because I feel I can best advance plot when I’m in her perspective haha. You might notice some serious plot scrambling between TFA and TLJ in this chapter, and that’s fine. You might know whereabouts we’re heading... Enjoy!

Rey wakes up on her second morning on the Raddus, and knows she needs to find a way off this ship. She meets Finn for breakfast, as is becoming their habit with one another, and he fills her in on Poe’s condition. Luckily for all of the resistance, Poe hadn’t quite made it to the hangar bay when the First Order destroyed it. Many of his friends and fellow pilots had, however. While it had taken a few nail-biting hours to disable the First Order’s tracking beam and escape, the mood of the mess Hall was much improved compared to last night’s meal. Poe sits with them, a little quieter and less animated than Rey had seen him yesterday, picking at his warm oatmeal. Finn tries to fill the silence with Rey as best he can. 

“So I heard you knew a guy who betrayed us for the First Order,” Finn says to Rey innocently. She’s unsettled at the notion of her connection to Ben Solo being fodder for gossip among the resistance. 

“I knew him, sure,” Rey divulges, leaning forward as if in confidence. “He’s Leia’s son. Ben Solo.”

“You didn’t know that?” Poe darts in, perking up a little at the thought of a subject he might know more on than Finn. “Ben Solo, son of a smuggler and a princess, shipped off to Jedi school as soon as he could walk?”

“You seem to be under the impression that we were allowed to discuss... things... in the First Order,” Finn snipes. “It’s not my fault I’m not clued up on the history of the resistance.”

“I only knew him after I got off Jakku,” Rey thinks aloud, “I wonder what he was like as a kid.”

“Probably a nightmare. Can you imagine having Leia Organa and Han Solo for parents?”

“No.” Finn and Rey deadpan in unison, and Poe is dignified enough to pretend to be embarrassed. 

“He must have had some bad in him,” Poe insists, spooning lukewarm gruel into his mouth. Rey isn’t in the mood to argue in favour of the resistance’s number one enemy at present, and so keeps quiet on the matter of Ben’s inner good or evil. 

“I have to find Luke,” she changes the subject swiftly. “I’m only halfway through my training. I can’t fight him unless I’m prepared.”

“When are you ever gonna get the chance to fight him?” Poe begins to dismiss her worries. 

“I need to be prepared,” Rey insists. “The First Order have surprised us before. I need to be one step ahead. I need to _find Luke_.”

Poe finishes his bowl as he considers Rey’s predicament. Rey has long since finished her own bowl. 

“Well,” he says, “find him, then. What’s keeping you here? You’re not an official member of the resistance, Leia hasn’t had chance to induct you yet. You can just leave.”

“I...” it feels silly to say out loud that she can’t seem to stomach the idea of going alone. Or rather, with just Chewbacca, part and parcel with the Falcon as he is. He won’t need talking into her self-imposed mission, however. 

“I’ll go with you,” Finn says with zero hesitation. “We should probably stick together, anyway. Your kind of trouble seems to balance out my trouble, most of the time.”

“Aren’t you a resistance member?” Rey asks. Finn shakes his head a little sheepishly. 

“I never officially joined. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of jumping straight into another military organisation.”

“Fair enough,” Poe breathes. “I wish I could help, but, it seems I’m the only one officially in the ranks. Plus, you don’t need a pilot. These guys do.”

He twirls his spoon around his head in an overarching referral to the resistance at large. 

“Somebody’s gotta rebuild the pilot’s division.” His smile is sad, if determined. “You kids go have fun.”

***

Rey is sorely tempted to simply gather as many supplies as she can without alerting anyone’s suspicions and vanish after Luke, but her sense of responsibility prevents her. She could never leave anyone the way she was left. 

She seeks an audience with Leia, who has resumed control of the ship with a bridge full of mostly newly-promoted officials. They’re young, and inexperienced, but diligent. Rey can see she as she walks into the hastily assembled Bridge 2.0 how hard they’re all working to recover lost data, reach out to allies, locate a safe place to dock for supplies and medical care for those wounded during the attack. At the centre of it all, conducting the room as if it were an orchestra, is Leia. 

“Good morning, general,” Rey greets her. She isn’t sure whether she should salute, so she clamps her fists by her side. Leia seems tired. 

“Just Rey,” she says brightly, brushing off her tiredness with visible effort. “How can I help?”

“I don’t need you to do anything,” she begins, “I’m just making you aware. Finn and I are leaving to find Luke.”

To her credit, she doesn’t bat an eyelid. “Thank you for informing me. I trust the Falcon is prepared for your departure? When can I expect the free space in my hangar?”

“Um, soon,” Rey is thrown by Leia’s okay-ness. “Chewie’s kept things ticking over while we’ve been here. We just need some food supplies.”

“Can I ask where your destination is?” She smiles. “Have you located my brother so quickly?”

“No, no,” Rey feels as though she’s walking into a trap. “I, uh, I can’t find him through the Force-”

“And I can’t find him with my ship’s technologies,” Leia interjects. “It seems we are both at a disadvantage. I’ll say this, Just Rey - when I don’t know where to start, and I need to find it fast, I go to Maz.”

“Maz?”

“Maz Kanata, of the planet Takodana. She’s a dealer, of sorts. Not strictly resistance, she doesn’t lend herself to politics if she can help it at all.” Leia doesn’t bother to hide her displeasure at this fact. “But she’s extremely knowledgeable. Her castle on Takodana is an eccentric place, to be sure, but if anyone has heard word of Luke’s whereabouts by now, she’ll know about it.”

Rey is grasped within the clutches of a sudden burst of hope. “Why are you telling me this? I thought you were going to tell me to stay.”

“Oh, stars, why would I do that? The beauty of your situation is it’s mobility, Rey. Your freedom, while concerning should you sway from the light, is a great asset to people like me.” She smiles deeply, her eyes screwing into warm wrinkles and her lips pursing. “Go and find my brother, and let’s hope he will help you restore balance.”

Rey didn’t expect to leave the bridge with Leia’s agreement, let alone her approval. She’s stunned, but in a good way, and her elation carries her all the way to where Finn is packing the Falcon with supplies and bickering with Chewbacca. 

“Careful, he’s a Wookie,” Rey calls as she approaches, “they can rip a man’s arms off if tested.”

Finn looks pleadingly at her while Chewie grumbles in shyriiwook. She hides her smile behind a box she picks up as she attempts to soothe Chewie somewhat. He falls into step behind her, and she realises that he’s using her as a buffer against Chewie, and her hidden smiles grows into a grin. 

“Come on, Chewie, we need this loaded right away. You ever been to Takodana?” She asks the wookie with a smile. He carries something large and unspeakably heavy with ease, grunting an affirmative. He immediately informs Rey that if he takes her to the planet, however, he will most certainly _not_ be leaving the ship. 

“What’s wrong with the place?” She asks, confused. “Is it Maz Kanata?”

Chewie visibly recoils at the her name. 

“It is! What’s wrong with her? Is she dangerous?”

Chewie turns away bashfully, fiddling pointlessly with the load he just carried aboard the ship. Almost timidly, he explains his issue with Maz. Rey gives him an understanding bump on the arm, holding in her laughter just barely. He slinks off to the cockpit to input the coordinates to Takodana, and Rey quickly fills Finn in on the situation when he flashes her a look of confusion. 

“I don’t like her already,” Finn mutters sulkily. Rey gives him a shove to the galley while she goes to join Chewie in the pilots quarters. He’s performing the last checks before they can leave. The hangar bay hatch begins to open in front of them in anticipation. 

Open space awaits, and Rey realises she has travelled more in these few days of upheaval than she ever thought possible for a mere desert rat hailing from Jakku. It’s humbling, disquieting, and empowering all at once to think of herself as the kind of person allowed to embark on these missions, explore the galaxy and fight for others who, like herself, were trapped. As they exit the hangar bay and the Raddus fades into nothing more than an enlivened speck, Rey finds herself wondering what Ben is doing, if he’s thinking of her in the ways she so often finds herself thinking of him. Every time she looks at the stars spread around her like a beckoning map, she can’t help but think if he is looking at these same stars, thinking her thoughts, too. It’s silly to dwell on, she knows this, but some of the time at least her head is her own, and she can think in it whatever she pleases. These fantasies are just that - fantasies, and as long as she and Ben are apart they’re harmless. 

It’s lucky, then, that she’s turned away from the control panel containing their destination when the bond suddenly kicks into life, drawing back like a curtain. Rey sees Ben before he sees her, for once, which makes her suspect that it was she who triggered it this time, by thinking of him. It seems dangerously easy. He’s behind the controls of his own ship, the shuttle, and she can tell his mood is foul without having to delve into his thoughts. Without his helmet he is notoriously easy to read. 

_Oh, Ben, I didn’t see you there,_ she says suddenly, jokingly, and she relishes the slight twitch as she startles him. His eyes flick over to her, indiscreetly looking her up and down before returning to the screen detailing his position. He isn’t interested in hiding his location, it seems. 

“So it strengthens,” he mutters as if to himself. Then, louder, “So Luke is missing. You wouldn’t happen to know where he went?”

 _Like I’d tell you if I knew,_ Rey says brightly, feeling enough at ease to try and lighten his mood. She has time to kill before Takodana, after all. 

“You always were useless,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and she would have taken such a comment to heart if she hadn’t already seen the true content of his convictions about her. 

_Say that to my face,_ she grins, and he breaks a little, a small smile curling into the corner of his mouth, vanishing just as quickly. 

“I’m endeavouring to,” he cajoles her. 

_You’re looking for me?_ Rey asks, just barely keeping her surprise at bay. Of course he’s been sent to look for her. She’s one of the last connections to Luke left, and he’d be a fool if he hadn’t immediately offered up their bond to Snoke. The thought disappoints her still. 

“The First Order is,” he confirms, his grip tight on the controls. “Surely you must have been expecting this?”

 _I didn’t expect them to send you,_ Rey admits. 

“Rest assured, this little secret stays between us,” He says it like it is something to be ashamed of, this bond, but it genuinely throws Rey for a second. They are the only people aware of this ability in the universe, when both sides of the war would kill to discover it and therefore exploit it. The information which could be gained even accidentally from their connection is staggering to consider. Yet he’s kept it from the Supreme Leader. 

_That’s foolish,_ she can’t help but say. She shouldn’t be encouraging him to confess this. 

“I prefer to do things the traditional way,” he says, as if it is an explanation. “I have enough people in my head.”

 _I would apologise, but you’re very much in my head too,_ Rey smiles, _so you can deal with it_.

It’s only after the bond has faded, Ben’s gentle smile ebbing away into starlight, that Rey realises the deeper implications of what he said. There are multiple people in his head, not just her. The dark side whispers to him still, and he’s hinted at seeing Han in the past. Rey feels overwhelmed with just herself and him to deal with mentally. She couldn’t imagine having more than that, or rather she couldn’t imagine remaining _sane_ with more than one person in her head at any given time. She feels a pang of sympathy toward Ben, before quickly snapping back into the present. That thought felt too much like seduction, too much like an attempt at persuasion. Her priorities need to remain in order. Finding Luke and helping the rebellion is of utmost importance. 

***

Rey doesn’t even bother to hide her delight that Takodana is a planet lush with life. They land a few feet away from a crumbling castle, surrounded on all sides by freshwater lakes, austere mountain ranges, and clustered forestry. As she’s taking a few moments to herself, feeling the steady balance of solid rock beneath her feet, clean air in her lungs, and gentle sun on her face, Finn moves to stand beside her. As a stormtrooper, even when they were shipped to battle, Rey supposes that everything experienced through a mask is hardly an experience at all. His eyes are closed as they face the sun, shoulder to shoulder, his face burning brightly in direct sunlight rather than the fluorescent lighting of a star cruiser. She feels an instant of contentedness, the Force swirling within her mirroring the caress of the breeze. As much as she relishes the chance to travel, this feeling she only ever feels on-planet, the openness and freedom impossible to achieve in space. 

“We should find Maz,” Rey says finally, breaking the moment’s peace. Finn nods grimly. Chewie hangs well back, hunkering down in the Falcon and looking more cowed than Rey has ever seen him. 

They walk with false confidence into the castle, beneath a veritable blanket of nation flags, and the establishment is full of character and sound when they open the door. Not all of these beings are strictly Resistance, Rey realises as they pick their way through the crowd, but then again she supposes this is neutral territory. Leia had mentioned how Maz supposedly rejected taking sides when it came to politics. They make it three tables in before a voice cuts through the general chatter, silencing the room. 

“You there!” A small, orange-skinned woman calls out. Rey and Finn both instinctively freeze. The woman strolls over, her eyes disproportionally large behind a pair of thick goggles. “What brings you here?”

“We’re looking for Maz,” Rey blurts, “Maz Kanata. We need her help.”

The woman considers this. “Oh, you do, do you?”

“Yes,” Finn interjects. “Do you know where we can find her? Is she here?”

“Yes, I think she’s here,” the woman smiles conspiratorially, looking around as if to locate the person in question. “I’m Maz Kanata.”

“You are?” Rey says with relief. “We need to speak with you. We don’t have time and we need your help.”

Maz is unmoved. She removes her goggles, revealing her actual eye size to be considerably smaller than Rey first observed. She looks at them both for what feels like a long time, her gaze raking them up and down, lingering on their faces, their clothes, their weapons. 

“You seem familiar,” she says to Rey. “But we’ve never met. You are strong with the Force?”

“Ah...” Rey struggles for how to best describe herself. “I’m in training, but force sensitive, yes. That’s part of the reason we need your help.”

“Last I heard there was only man still training Jedi,” Maz continues, “Luke Skywalker. I’ve never met him, but I knew of a man named Han Solo. They were friends, yes?”

“You knew Han Solo?” Rey is drawn up short.

“That man was always needing something,” Maz grumbles good-naturedly, “But I liked that Wookie of his.”

“He’s told us,” Rey confesses, feeling flustered and not at all in control of their conversation. 

“Ah, he’s here!” Maz laughs, “where is Han Solo, then?”

Rey feels her tongue turn to lead in her mouth. She turns to Finn pleadingly, and he takes his turn to try and convince Maz to consider them. 

“Han Solo died at the hands of his son, Ben Solo, a few days ago,” Finn says gravely. Maz frowns. “Luke has gone missing, and we need to find him so Rey can complete her training and help the Resistance defeat the First Order.”

“I should have known,” Maz murmurs, a far-away look in her ancient eyes. “What you call the First Order, I have known under many names. The Sith. The Empire. Evil must exist for there to be balance, but in turn so must goodness rise to meet it. There has been disruption for too long.”

She appears to steel herself against the burgeoning despair. 

“I will help you. I don’t know where Luke is, but I might have something which can help you find him.” She reaches up, beckoning to Rey, and leads them through the crowd of questionable characters down a set of ancient stone stairs far away from the noise and rabble. 

As they descend together the three of them, Rey feels as though the deeper they go, the thicker the Force feels around her. It’s disconcerting, if not overtly insidious, as it thickens into a kind of fog. It suddenly seems like she already knows where Maz is leading them, even though she can’t remember ever having been here before. Finn beside her is seemingly unaffected, but Maz hurries them along now, always looking straight ahead. They pass by rooms filled with artefacts, piles of junk discarded (or rather collected) with reckless abandon. Maz leads them to the end of a passageway full of them, and then into the left hand chamber. There’s a slight buzzing sound in the base of Rey’s neck, like a small electrical charge, or the onset of a tension headache. It’s similar to how her bond with Ben used to feel, only when she looks expectantly for him, she sees only Finn and Maz, now throwing heaves of junk over her shoulder as she digs deep into a particular pile. Rey reaches out a hand, and the Force springs to her fingertips almost without her asking, and from within the pile emerges what Rey knows instinctively Maz was looking for.

“It calls to you,” Maz says, pausing among the wreck. “It belongs with you.”

In her hands Rey holds onto a lightsaber unlike any she has seen before. Images swirl before her eyes; planet’s she has yet to visit and cannot name, anger and cunning in equal amount, yellow possessed eyes looking into her very soul with interest and appraisal. She recognises the thread of this life force, this spirit within the saber. Maz does not need to tell her, but she does anyway.

“That particular saber belonged to Darth Zannah, many, many years ago,” Maz says. “It came into my possession after she vanished long ago.”

Rey can barely hear her. She’s back on Yavin, in that kriffing _temple_ , and Ben is succumbing all over again, and so is she, and Zannah laughs in her head endlessly, vindicated at last. Rey is frozen in her shock and fear, but realises when the darkness swirling within the weapon does not immediately infiltrate her body that she is not in danger. The ghosts lurking here are just that: ghosts. Zannah herself has not been resuscitated by the discovery of her lightsaber. Only her memories. 

“I had heard she was a peculiar Sith; she remained the closest to the light in her time, though her atrocities were many. It is not unheard of for a sith weapon to accept a Jedi as it’s Master, though this is the first time I have witnessed it.” Maz turns back to the pile, and pulls out a second object without any need to search for it. 

Once again, Rey is omniscient. “That’s Luke’s lightsaber.”

“Yes, child,” Maz offers it to her. She takes it numbly. The dual-bladed saber feels hot in her right hand. 

“How did you get this? It was lost in Cloud City...”

“That is a good question,” Maz smiles, “for another time. I hope it helps you to find what you are looking for. It is all I can offer you.”

Rey attaches Luke’s original saber to her utility belt, but she can’t quite bear to give up the sith blade just yet. She holds it in her hand, both relishing and afraid of how right it feels in her grip. She longs to ignite it, but she’s also terrified of seeing the red blades. 

“Thank you, Maz. You’ve done far more than I thought you could,” Rey says, a little woodenly. Finn looks concerned, but she brushes him off. 

“You must go now. Find Skywalker. Bring balance to the Force.”

Rey leaves the castle in a daze, barely aware of Finn straining to keep up with her as she strides ahead, two new weights heaving on either hip. 

“I need to meditate. Luke’s lightsaber might still call to him, but I need to focus to feel it,” she explains to Finn. He nods, the worry not quite leaving his expression, but luckily for Rey his resignation wins over him and he leaves her to reconvene with Chewie on the Falcon. Rey retreats into the forest, walking without a sense of destination, with no semblance of direction, even. 

The trees grow dense around her, light filtering through dark viscous leaves and creating veins of sunlight against the uneven ground. Every other step blinds her. The saber which once belonged to Darth Zannah burns insistently against her leg, as if the metal had been held over an open flame. Her thumb itches. She walks on, seeking solitude, quiet, the impossible on this strange planet, in these woods where the trees are alive with birdsong, the scratching of insects and yet stranger creatures all hidden from view. Rey sees a small clearing, little more than a moss-covered mound in truth, and heads towards it in a bout of frustration. Meditation is the last thing she wants to contend with at this time, when a Sith Lord’s weapon of choice has called out to her, and continues to sing a siren song of seduction. She assumes the cross-legged position nevertheless, her eyes sliding closed and her wrists resting across the parallel points of her knees. Her mind is in flux. She seeks the Force, finding its gentle reverberating wave and latches onto it, imagining a small boat on a wide open sea. She takes the saber and places it in front of her, like a guiding light, and it’s force signature appears in her mind’s eye. 

It’s one of the oldest sabers she’s come into contact with. There are decades of memories stored within it, emotions too overpowering to name, and deep, deep within this ascribed signature, this ball of convulsing energy, is Luke. Or rather, a version of him. Sandy-haired, clean-shaven, his face still flushed from the desert sun of Tatooine. Smaller, somehow. Not in height, but in disposition. This Luke has yet to acquire the gravitas and absolutism of the Master Rey has known since childhood. In its place instead is a boyish roundness, a tendency to bend when pushed, and the spark of unrest which would propel him across the galaxy one day, if only he could escape the sand. 

Rey falls deeper into her meditative state. 

It is easy to think of the Force as an object rather than a living, sentient thing. It conjures out of the essence of Luke a thread, glowing as bright as lit magnesium, and sends it forth to locate the source. Rey’s breath catches when she sees the planet it has pointed her to. She had learned of Ahch-To from Luke himself as the birthplace of the Jedi, an ancient revered place. It made sense to Rey that if Luke were to vanish, it was to here where he would seek refuge. 

She gets up, abandoning her meditation and retrieving the saber. With a destination now in mind she sets off back to the Falcon, eager to inform Chewie and Finn of her success. Her step is interrupted by the unmistakable sound of an incoming spacecraft. 

Hidden among the trees Rey searches for the source of the noise, and feels the blood drain from her face as she sees a ship matching Finn’s description of a First Order space shuttle. It’s wings rescind as it makes to land, forming parallel antennae as it falls to rest a few feet from the castle. Rey breaks into a run, though her knees feel like water. She watches, anticipates, as the entrance hatch opens and none other than Kylo Ren emerges, dressed in a new uniform of darkest black from boot to helm. Finn and Chewie have noticed the unwelcome presence from the Falcon, and Kylo must fend off a few well-aimed blaster strikes with a weapon Rey has never seen before - a saber, but so hastily assembled that the beam of the blade shivers in the air, the strain of the kyber crystal emanating with every deflected bolt. It glows red, which shouldn’t surprise Rey, yet does. It’s hard to conflate Ben Solo with this fanatical dress. 

She emerges from the forest and immediately sees Kylo’s helm turn towards her. He feeds off two more bolts without paying them much attention, and advances. 

“Rey!” Finn shouts, and she looks over to where he and Chewie are shielded somewhat by the distended ramp of the Falcon. She reaches for a weapon, her hand curling around not the original hilt of her Master but the dual-bladed saber of Zannah. Her thumb, crying out in victory, ignites the staff.

It gives Kylo a moment’s pause to see Rey prepared to face off with him armed with a sith weapon, and she uses his surprise to her advantage, advancing with a confidence she doesn’t really feel. She despises the helm, seeing her own apprehensive face reflected in its visor. She wants to look into her opponents _eyes_. 

She brings the staff down in a slashing movement, her feet finding their stance with ease, falling back into the forms she first learned on Jakku to defend herself from the traders who would pick on her as a weak target for scrap. It’s perfectly balanced in her hand, and she feels a surge of confidence, a connection to the weapon beyond familiarity with its extended length. Kylo parries, thrusts in return, and Rey spins the staff to deflect his move, side stepping and allowing his momentum to carry him past her. She toys with him then, striking a quick burn against his leg as he stumbles. He rears back, and she reads anger in his movements.

“Coward,” she spits, finding it admittedly easier to project a visage of hate towards this faceless being. It’s easier to pretend, perhaps, that this is not Ben Solo. 

“Thief,” Ben’s voice is unrecognisable, garbled and warped through a voice transmitter. She realises he has seen Luke’s saber on her person. 

“Murderer,” she lashes back, spinning her staff around her neck and forcing Kylo to duck or else be beheaded. 

“Interesting weapon,” Kylo comments on her staff. “You wielded something similar on Jakku, if I remember correctly. I thought you might have left that part of you behind.”

Rey declines to answer. He’s trying to get into her head. Funny, considering how often he crops up there unwillingly. She dives into the offence, twirling her saber like a baton, as if it weighs nothing in her hands, and this steady momentum she has built cuts rivets in Kylo’s defence, sending him back over himself. Rey takes a risk, sweeping her leg out to trip him up, expecting him to laugh in her face. To both of their surprise, it works, upending Kylo into the grass and giving Rey a precious few seconds to unclip Luke’s saber from her belt and toss it towards Finn, willing him to catch it before Kylo gets back up. Hilt meets palm with a resounding slap, and Finn is no idiot. He turns and retreats back into the Falcon, and Rey knows he’s going to hide it somewhere Kylo won’t be able to pick out of her head. She feels happiness burst within her, and unspeakable gratitude. She can at least protect Luke from Kylo Ren, even if he now regains his footing to loom over her, his fury crackling in the air like lightning waiting to strike. 

Like a true sith, he funnels his anger into his focus, and Rey can do nothing but wait for the inevitable blow. It doesn’t come. Instead, she feels herself falling, her mind closing like a flower in darkness, and the faint sensation of hands appearing to catch her before she is taken completely.


	13. Precipice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the appalling gap between this chapter and the last, as ever University has been calling me away from writing, but this chapter is finally done! Warnings ahead for explicit sexy times.

Ben carries the inert Rey aboard his ship, stopping the blaster bolt fired by the notorious defector without so much as turning his head. He ignores the cries emanating from the ship which once belonged to his father, holding cradled within its shining hull so much of his animosity and pain. The bolt sizzles in mid-air where it was fired, and he waits until the hatch has been safely sealed behind him before releasing it, hearing its faint impact against his shields. 

He pauses a moment, looks down at the girl in his arms who might only be asleep from how peaceful she appears, had Ben himself not forced the curtain of unconsciousness over her. The saber she wielded, now powered-down, rests against her abdomen. A faint sheen of sweat, from exertion or fear, coats her brow. Her hip holster is empty. He feels for an instant the ice cold kiss of failure that he has not retrieved two treasures for his master - Luke’s lightsaber would have held far greater connection to the man himself than an old apprentice. Still, he has yet to interrogate her. He shifts her slightly in his arms, hoisting her slightly higher against his chest as he makes to imprison her within one of the shuttle’s cells. He notes the seashell shade of her lips, parted in stasis, and the ink-stroke black of her lashes sweeping down to kiss her cheeks in greeting. Freckles, invisible at a distance, are faintly there up close. How many constellations could he count among them? How many hours could he spend doing nothing more than drawing links between this girl’s face and the innumerable stars permeating the stretches of the galaxy?

The ship lurches slightly as it leaves the planet’s atmosphere. He’ll need to manually input the order to hit lightspeed, but for now he knows that the traitor and his ship won’t dare to give chase. He may have emerged alone, but it would be a risk to assume that his ship was not fully staffed with troopers and personnel capable of commanding enough firepower to blow the rickety old smuggling ship to the outer rim. He is free to linger, and linger he shall, even as he eases Rey back onto a cot in the shuttle’s prison. Alone as they are, an absurd whim arises within him to stay near her, but he doesn’t need the rasp of Snoke to inform of the idea’s failings. Disarming her, he turns, exits the cell, and closes it behind him without a backward glance. He heads directly for the control room, where he inputs the code for lightspeed and sets their course for Snoke’s location; the Supremacy. 

***

He bides his time, waiting for Rey to wake up so the interrogation process can begin. He hadn’t implemented the Force sleep over-zealously, so there was no reason for her to remain unconscious this long. He considers attempting to force her back to wakefulness, but it is his impatience getting the better of him. He has no desire to return to Snoke without some semblance of useful information as to Luke Skywalker’s location. He fears he has already left much to be desired compared with Snoke’s initial expectations. As much as he had won him over to the dark side, it was now a task to keep him there. However much he tried to conceal his doubts and thereby his weakness from the Supreme Leader, he was no match for his control over the Force. He could delve inside Ben’s mind undetected at any hour of the day, and so his continued dithering placed him in a difficult position. Snoke had yet to bring up the issue of his loyalty to the dark side, though Ben knew he must at the very least suspect the fragility of his connection. His connection with Rey, by contrast, seemed to grow stronger by the hour. How he had presumed to keep that particular indiscretion a secret for so long was a mystery to him, but he was grateful nonetheless. It was disconcerting how beyond his control it felt. 

His control panel lights up with a notification of movement in the prisoner’s cell; a quick check in with the Force confirms that Rey is awake, and not only that but up and pacing. He stands from the pilot’s chair, straightening his cloak, suddenly self-conscious. It was time to begin.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” Rey bursts out as soon as he enters the cellblock. She’s pressed against the door, her fists wrapped around the bars in an almost comical fashion. Had she a ball-and-chain around her foot her predicament would be less obvious. 

“Completing a mission,” he replies levelly. 

“I don’t have Luke’s lightsaber anymore, genius! Why kidnap me?”

“You may not have the physical manifestation, no, but that doesn’t mean you are any less useful to Supreme Leader Snoke,” he explains.

“That makes no sense! I’m not even trained, Luke is _gone_ , and if you think I’m going to turn to the dark side then you’ve seriously miscalculated.” 

“Rey,” he says, and something in his voice stills her. He realises he’s left his helmet in the control room. He’s more Ben Solo than Kylo Ren now. “What was inside the saber?”

Her face slackens momentarily in her surprise, her eyes popping open a fraction of a centimetre wider. She wasn’t expecting him to have deduced that she could have unlocked the information dormant within the weapon. She had just confirmed that was exactly what she’d done. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insists. 

“Oh really?” He reaches for the Force, and before she has time to react he _twists_ , sending her shooting backwards to slam into the far wall. She gasps as the breath is knocked out of her. 

“Yes, really, you _buffoon_ ,” she hisses, a hand pressed to her chest. 

“You’re smarter than this, Rey. Why else would you have travelled to the abode of a known collector and retrieved it, putting yourself in such a precarious position, had it not contained some clue as to Luke’s location?”

“We travelled there to see if Maz Kanata had any idea where he might go. She didn’t, but she had the sabers. It was her decision to gift them to us out of sympathy to the cause. Perhaps she felt it was unfair that the only fighting Jedi had no weapon.”

“You’re not ready for a saber. And two?”

“Oh, did I not appear ready earlier on?” Rey looks emphatically at his right leg, where the burn from her saber itches slightly. It’s weak deflection, but Ben allows her to distract him momentarily. 

“You appeared scared.”

“Funny. That’s how I thought you looked.” 

That hurts. He curls his fist, feeling the Force twine round her neck and squeeze in much the same way favoured by his late grandfather. She reacts, of course, how could she not, but it’s not what he was expecting. She wraps a hand around her neck, feeling for what cannot be felt, but otherwise remains entirely still, even as her face darkens to a shade of luminous red. All at once, his anger leaves him, and the Force rescinds from her. She takes long, deep lungfuls of air, her eyes piercing his as she appears unwilling to lose this battle of wills. 

“Tell me what was in the saber,” he repeats. The urchin has the nerve to _smile_ at him. 

“You wouldn’t understand,” she says, her voice slightly ragged from her rough treatment. “You’ve turned your back on us.”

“That planet meant nothing more to me than a glorified prisoner’s cell. Skywalker was not my master but my keeper.” He hisses, reacting to the strange feeling of Rey being part of an ‘us’ which did not include him. 

“What did that make your father?” She aims low, but his shields are prepared. 

“Myself,” he says evenly, and Rey is confused. “He was the part of me that was weak. The part of me which always sought approval and was hopelessly crushed when he did not receive it. He was the gangrenous limb I had to amputate to survive, and I am stronger now that he is dead.”

“Always so selfish,” Rey shakes her head, a rueful smile appearing at her lips as she sinks down onto the cot, still rubbing her neck balefully. “He wasn’t for you to kill. He didn’t belong to you, and it was not your right to take him. He was... he was mine.”

Her voice softens when she talks of him, and it is as if he has appeared once more to stand between them. Jealousy burns low in Ben’s gut, there is no other word for this betrayal he feels. They have both betrayed him. They must both face retribution. His hand shakes when he opens the cell door, and Rey is instantly wary, standing up and hurrying to back away like a caged animal. He doesn’t care. In this moment, he absolutely does not care about anything which Snoke will say to him about winning over the powerful Force user. He doesn’t care about his father’s voice offering a low warning in the back of his skull. He doesn’t care that this has devolved from an interrogation into something much too visceral and emotional. _He does not care_.

Rey is looking at him with the eyes of a girl he used to know, on a distant planet marred by hatred, and he wants nothing more than to pluck them out, that they might cease to wield such power over him. He wants to peel the flesh from her bones, to consume her. Darkness curls around his throat, something he can’t swallow past, clouding his vision, framing Rey in mists of red. They wait for the inevitable to happen. 

Ben moves first, because he must, this energy between them cannot be sustained. They are bound to bend or break against one another. He moves fast and Rey prepares for a blow, turning her cheek, angling her body to divert his momentum and soften the impact. They collide, and it is almost violent, but then Ben’s hands wrap tightly around her arm and waist, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise, his mouth bearing down upon Rey’s parted lips, and the bond between them _sings_. 

Rey’s mouth is warm beneath his, and he can feel her elevated pulse. Her arms have come to push against him, but her gasp is so soft, and he can feel what she feels alongside his own sensations in a muddled and confusing transference of energy. He draws his lips back, experiments with teeth, and is delighted by Rey’s answering moan. Her arms no longer push, but pull him in closer, and he is at a loss to do anything but follow. He rains gentle nips up and along her neck and jaw, feeling her eyelids flutter, the absent-minded tickle of his hair against her cheek. She smells of the forest, of damp earth, and it is an intoxicating scent to him. Her back hits the wall with some impact, but he knows in his bones, in the feel of her own involuntary _yes_ whispered traitorously through the Force that Rey will not break beneath him. She has been forged from desert sand and burned by many suns and here she stands today, his own personal affliction to degrade him and reduce him to such base actions. 

Her fingers, _clever, so clever_ slip off his gloves, so that he may better feel her against him. She grows impatient, over-sensitive, and using her not inconsiderable strength she flips them, sending Ben crashing down to the small metal cot to better access his mouth. She is the one to re-ignite the kiss, a thought which flutters inside Ben’s head like a songbird, and a deep affirming rumble emanates from his chest as Rey sits astride his legs, forcing his head to tilt upwards to see her, relishing the flash of victory in her eyes whose pupils have swollen so that they are almost black. This is less an embrace than an assault, Ben thinks faintly, but his hands wander up her ribs, counting them, berating how lean she is, like one long sinew. 

Then just as quickly as it began, it is over. Like moths to the flame it seems Rey has singed her wings, and they break apart lest they should lose themselves. Rey draws back, ignoring Ben as he moves to follow her receding mouth. Tears shine on her cheeks, a reaction he has failed to notice, and he remains seated on the cot while she flees. 

The bond fades away once more, but it lingers long enough for Ben to discern within her conflict, shame and guilt. He considers giving chase, but in total honesty he’s not certain his legs will carry him as far as the door. He picks up his discarded gloves where they lay on the cot, and with them back on he feels more grounded. Less likely to break apart. They hide the tremor, at least. 

When he feels able and ready to face perhaps the most righteously angry Rey he’s ever encountered, he reaches out with the Force. She’s lurking in the control room, which would be very bad news were the controls of the ship not patterned specifically to his retina and fingerprint. She can’t so much as flash a coded message let alone pilot the ship, as she has very probably already realised. Ben does not want to have this conversation. He feels as if he is coming round from a fevered dream, one he’s had many times before. He’d rather forget his obscene breach of conduct, and the way Rey’s wanton thigh felt beneath the grasp of his bare hand, and how _she’d_ kissed _him_ right back, and how well it was all going until... until Rey had realised who it was beneath all those layers of fabric. 

He discovers her in the control room, midway through re-wiring the central panel, having somehow ripped off the very expensive and expertly secured protective metal sheet. He has to stop for a moment, taking a slow breath in.

“What are you doing?” He asks, because he is genuinely curious. Rey jumps from where she is bent over a mess of circuitry and wires, bumping her head on the tip of the main steering. Ben refrains from sniggering. She turns around, her face flushed, her fingers singed, her brows knitted together.

“Trying to _get off this ship_ ,” she declares, before turning back to the electrocution waiting to happen. 

“That’s impossible without my permission,” Ben explains.

“That’s what _you_ think,” Rey mumbles, more to herself than anyone else. A wire sparks, and she flinches away.

“The best engineers in the galaxy built this ship, and a foolish desert rat like yourself has absolutely no chance of re-wiring the entire vehicle.”

Rey declines to answer, choosing instead to facilitate not one, but five sparks in rapid succession. Ben is growing impatient. 

“If you break my ship, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Oh, relax, I’m not going to break it,” Rey licks the tip of her index finger before pushing an exposed copper wire head down. The screen flashes to life above their heads, awaiting an input of destination. “Haha! Now you’re under my power, Ben Solo.”

“Rey,” he says, aiming for menacing, but instead relaying exasperation. “Will you please come away from the computer?”

“Ah, Ah! I didn’t give you permission to speak. Go and lock yourself in that awful cell. I’m taking you to the resistance.”

Ben’s patience, already wearing thin, finally snaps. Using the Force he pins Rey’s arms to her sides, and levitates her away from the control panel. After ensuring she is secured, he moves to quickly reset the previous coordinates, lamenting the damage done to his beautiful sleek ship. 

“This is my ship,” he says, “you’re my prisoner. I will escort you back to your cell and you will remain there until we reach the First Order.”

Rey struggles, pushes back with the same force, but Ben is unshakeable. He floats Rey ahead of him, marching her all the way back to the still-open cell. He waits until the door is closed and locked behind her to allow the force to ebb away. She lands nimbly on her feet, snarling like a caged wildcat. 

“I’ll never tell you where Luke is. I’ll die first.”

Ben looks steadily into her eyes for a long moment. Behind the anger, there is confusion, perhaps hurt. She is trying to save face with this overly-confident facade, Ben realises. 

“If you won’t give him up to me, you will relinquish him to Snoke,” Ben says, and there brooks no argument in his tone. It is not a threat, but rather a fact. 

And with those final words hanging heavy in the air between them, along with all those which have not been said, cannot be said, Ben leaves.

He returns grimly to the control room to inspect the damage done. Two panels have been ripped off, and the screen has long since short circuited, emitting neutral blue light instead of its customary black loading screen. Rey’s haphazard hacking technique has effectively destroyed his navigation system. He heaves a long sigh, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’s suddenly very, very tired. An alert distracts him from his self-pity, however, as an incoming transmission from the Supremacy lights up the dashboard. His heart seizes with panic while he patches the call through, avoiding the viper’s nest of live wires buzzing quietly to his left, expecting the disappointed and domineering visage of Snoke to appear holographically. He is simultaneously relieved and annoyed when rather than his master, Aleric’s smirking face crackles into being, suspended before the controls. He makes no attempt to hide his distaste at her appearance.

“Ren,” she greets him simply. Her smirk is infuriating. 

“Aleric,” he replies blithely. “You’re using Snoke’s transmission code.”

“I didn’t think he’d mind,” Aleric wheedles, “I’m calling his favourite newest recruit for an update on his _very important solo mission_.”

_She doesn’t intend on him finding out_ , Ben thinks to himself, admittedly a little impressed at her brazenness. Aleric had taken to the fast-moving hierarchy of the First Order with outrageous ease, leading Ben to believe that she was perhaps pre-destined to turn away from the tradition and stagnation of the Jedi. She was the only knight Ben knew who was crazy enough to defy the Supreme Leader, though she was always careful that he either never discovered her transgressions, or that somebody else would be found at fault for them. She made others uneasy in a way she had never been able to express on Yavin. 

“How kind of you to check up on me, but I’m not in need of supervision,” Ben grits out. “I know you’re only calling for gossip fodder.”

“I’m offended you would think so little of me, Ren,” her smirk widens into a grin, “I take my responsibilities very seriously, you know.”

“You can inform the Supreme Leader that I have procured the Jedi Rey, and am in the process of delivering her to him personally,” Ben tries desperately to keep the conversation on track. And short. “I also take my responsibilities seriously.”

“Too seriously, in my opinion,” she appears to lean back against something. It’s hard to tell when Ben can only see the barest hint of her shoulders.

“Are you sitting in Snoke’s throne?” He asks her with no small amount of disbelief. 

“Of course not,” she huffs, but it takes her a moment to meet Ben’s eyes. When she does, he catches the spark of mischief there. 

“He’s going to wring your neck one day,” Ben sighs. “You have my update. Was there anything else you needed?”

“Yes, actually, while I remember,” she perks up visibly, “I was informed that not two minutes ago some officers reported strange activity in the control room of your ship. I believe their exact words were ‘a technological shitstorm’. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”

Ben’s heart rate kicks up a notch, but his face doesn’t so much as twitch. 

“No. Perhaps it’s a transmissions malfunction. When I return I’ll have the engineers take a look.”

“She’s a feisty one, Ren.” Aleric’s smile is reptilian. “I’d keep both eyes on her if I were you.”

“Your advice, as ever, is gratefully received,” Ben drawls, cutting the transmission before she manages to tip off his temper. She was no doubt already spinning elaborate tales of his elicit encounter with the prisoner of war, but what Ben is almost certain she was unaware of is how accurate her fairy tales might be. The call has reinforced the precariousness of his position in an uncomfortably blunt manner. His... relationship with Rey is jeopardising everything he has built for himself. He needs to ensure that no further incidents occur. 

He brings up the live footage of the prisoner bay, and watches Rey pace in her cell. She keeps glancing up at the camera’s position, as if she’s aware that Ben is watching her. What he had told Aleric was correct; he had captured the girl, and was dutifully returning her to the Supreme Leader. What he had neglected to inform her of was Rey’s little episode had made it nigh on impossible to reach the Supremacy with any kind of urgency. Ben ran figures in his head, calculating the fastest route he could take while his navigation system was faulty. He would avoid calling on planets for repairs. Rey had already proved herself nimble at escaping. At least in deep space she was confined to either the ship or its escape pods, each of which were fitted with trackers. Without navigation, however, finding Snoke’s constantly-moving ship would prove difficult. That was, of course, the intention of Snoke’s headquarters being mobile. It could take them a week; maybe more, if fate deigned to knock him further off-course than he already was. 

Ben steadies the ship, heading towards the Supremacy’s last known coordinates. Rey had destroyed delicate technology in her wrath, effectively hamstringing his ship. Their destination is the Kuat system, and he prays to gods in which he no longer believes for successful deliverance into the hands of his master. The snake-like grasp of failure feels hot on his heels as his shuttle lurches onwards through the stars. 

***

In the dark of his bunk that night, Ben lays awake. Sleep has often evaded him, no matter how hard he chases it, and he’s resigned himself to the mercy of the dark thoughts which crowd his mind and demand his attention. It used to be that he could expect company in these long, lonely nights awake, but those were fast becoming a distant memory. The whispers from the Force seemed to have quieted in recent days, and Snoke was hardly inclined to keep Ben entertained through the small hours. He had a galaxy to run, after all. Ben considers getting up. A distraction would be welcome, and the coffin-like tranquility of his bunk is almost unbearable. He’s about to heave himself up when the Bond gently makes its presence aware, like a pleasant tap on the shoulder. Each time they are connected it is a different sensation. 

He finds himself a trespasser in a dream. Rey’s dream. He had left her several hours ago quietly fuming in her cell, until she had eventually given up pacing and collapsed onto her cot, staring up into space with no small amount of intensity. It seems she had better luck finding sleep than Ben, however, as he looks over a great wide ocean and a cloudless sky. Cerulean dominates his vision, and as he watches the gentle dipping and bowing of the waves a sensation of peace overcomes him unlike anything he’s ever felt before. It is as if he is flying, but nothing seems to move around him. It is Rey’s peace which he feels, he realises. She is allowing him to partake in her tranquillity, and he is astounded at how easily she achieves this state of being. Simultaneously aware of Rey’s sleeping conscious and his own rapidly settling body, Ben hangs somewhere between slumber and wakefulness. He watches the sea as it takes long, deep breaths, until something appears on the horizon, rapidly growing closer and larger. It is an island. 

_Home,_ Rey thinks with such feeling, the longing within her taking hold of the dream and steering her towards this lush paradise in the centre of the warm, calm sea. Ben almost believes this place he has never seen before is familiar, Rey’s overpowering emotions deceiving him. They grow closer to the island, close enough to discern the many hundreds of small stone stairs which are spread across the relatively barren rock. An inhabited island. Rey is pulling away, however, refusing to allow herself closer. Ben is pulled along with her as she forces herself awake. 

The bond lingers, connecting them in silence. Ben wonders vaguely if his own parents ever felt this strange tension, laying in bed side by side after one of their arguments. It’s a dangerous thread to follow, however, and so he severs it. Seconds pass sluggishly. 

“How much did you see?” Rey asks, whispering, and Ben swears he can feel her breath in the shell of his ear, the almost-warmth of her lips as she draws close. 

“Nothing you didn’t want me to,” he replies diplomatically. 

“Liar,” she pronounces, but she doesn’t sound upset. “What time is it?”

“Late,” he says, “or early. Depends on your view.”

“This bond doesn’t care much for sociable hours, does it?” She muses aloud. Ben considers, but doesn’t answer. 

“How do people do this?” She whispers, finally, and he can feel rather than see that her eyes are closed. How strange it is, to feel one’s eyelids both open and closed simultaneously. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. 

“I can’t stand it.”

Ben’s gut wrenches. “I understand. You would rather you were connected to FN-2187, perhaps. I’m not...”

She moves quickly, rolling over in her cot and through the bond to hover over him, pinning him with her forearms either side of his head.

“Shut up,” she commands, and Ben’s gaped mouth closes. “This isn’t a matter of _who_ I am telepathically chained to. It is the matter of being chained at all. This wouldn’t be _preferable_ if you were Finn.” 

Ben doesn’t speak. His throat has closed. She is so close, the tips of their noses are practically touching. He can’t look anywhere but into her eyes, her pupils blown dark and full in the shade of the night. She appears to be considering something. Desire, red-tinged, seeps through the bond, and Ben is astonished that it flows from Rey. This feels so different to their previous encounter, which had been rushed, impulsive. It is hard to act impulsively when you are immersed in each other’s whims and thoughts. She leans forward, disappointingly past his lips, bending towards his right ear. He would be lying if he said he was not straining to listen. 

“Come to me,” she says, and all of Ben’s inhibitions, doubts, and concerns fly out of his head all at once. He feels as though he is being dragged forwards as he lurches up and out of bed, ignoring the head rush when he stands too quickly. 

He navigates the hallways of his ship easily, even in the dark. The bond stays with him, reassuring him of Rey’s continued presence even if he cannot see her. He trips once or twice, but that is nothing to do with the floor and everything to do with his distractingly loud heartbeat, matched beat for beat with Rey’s. 

Her cell is dark, illuminated only by thin strips of fluorescent lighting which operate even in the hours the ship is in low-power mode. She is but an indiscernible shape on her bunk, though he knows she’s watching him. Waiting for him. 

“Rey?” He murmurs, startled to hear his voice through two sets of ears. She sits up, edging towards the door of the hold. 

“Ben.” 

The doors fly open and suddenly they are together, chest to chest, Ben’s neck tilted almost at a right angle in order to better see Rey’s darkly luminous eyes. Her mind is running at a hundred miles per hour, and he sees her momentary indecision over whether or not to make a break for the control room as she had done before. It lasts a few seconds before her hand comes up to grasp the hair at his nape and pull his face down, down, down, towards her mouth. All she thinks of then is how warm he is, how much of him there is, and he preens beneath her attention despite himself. He tilts his head to better fit his mouth to her shape, and she sighs, her other hand snaking up to lock around his shoulders, fixing them in place. His blood boils. She pulls back suddenly, and he can’t help but follow, only stopped by a gentle finger to his lips.

“My bed or yours?” She asks.

“I would have you right here, on this floor,” he hears himself rasp, and he knows he’ll be embarrassed of his forwardness in daylight, but right now there are more pressing matters. Rey is not displeased.

“Mine it is,” she answers, dragging him backwards. He doesn’t care that her bed is little more than a metal slab. He isn’t thinking of any bruises other than the ones he wants to imprint on Rey’s body. His lips find her neck, and so do his teeth, biting and sucking until he’s sure there will be some evidence of their encounter come morning. 

Rey is busy undressing him. His sleep dress is marginally less complex than his usual First Order uniform to unclasp, and she does so marvellously, her cold hands seeking warmth against his burning torso, sending shivers running up his ribs. She moves to take her hands back, but his answering growl is encouragement enough for her to double back with confidence, her fingers idly raising the hairs on his skin in a bewildering mix of pleasure and chills. He grows timid at the thought of undressing her, flashes of Rey looking young, small, and vulnerable in his hands dissuading him. Rey snarls as she senses these thoughts through the bond, ripping her clothing off over her head and kicking away her boots and trousers. When she stands before him fully naked, Ben has to take a moment. She is not vulnerable anymore, even with nothing to defend her but skin. He can see the complex muscle in her shoulders, packed around her arms, swelling in her thighs. He had no need to take note of this on Yavin, but now he wants to drink it in. 

“Beautiful,” he hears himself say, and he feels his cheeks grow red, glad for the gloom. 

“Now you,” Rey commands, and he obliges her, shedding the black fabric like an unwanted skin. They stand before each other, perilously, dangerously exposed, for seconds which feel like hours. 

Ben breaks first. He crowds Rey against the wall next to her bunk, feeling both the resulting shivers and the cold of the metal against her naked spine through the bond. He can’t keep his wandering hands to himself, but with Rey in his head urging _more_ and _yes_ and _please_ , he sees no real need for restraint. He lets go, utterly. 

Rey pushes him back, telling him to sit with gentle encouragement, and he leans back against the bunk. Now it is his turn to shiver and for Rey to keep close. She looms over him like a shadow, her hair a curtain which tickles his nose and cheeks as she positions herself to sit astride his legs, where she pauses. They stand on the edge of a vast precipice together, and they are merely looking over at the great chasm, wondering what might happen if one of them were to jump. 

_Yes?_ Rey asks.

“Yes,” Ben whispers, and she jumps. 

He’s breathing much too loudly, and he ought to be self conscious, but Rey is all around him and he cannot slow his lungs even if he wanted to. She’s tight, achingly so, and its all too much, and she’s not even moving yet- 

She moves, just slightly, just to reposition herself, but it tears an ungodly noise out of him. Sweat beads on her forehead, gathers at the tip of her nose. He feels, bizarrely, the synchronised feeling of filling and being full. Her eyes are closed, screwed tight. There’s pain. She wasn’t quite ready. She should have gone slower. Ben’s hands work their way from their bruising grip on her thighs, slowly inward. He wants to feel this as many ways as he can. Rey watches him, waiting, and when she feels his fingers there is a moment of unexpected pleasure at the gentle pressure. She gasps, and the sweat bead falls, and she moves to recapture that feeling, bearing down hard. It’s too much, and entirely not enough. Ben curls his fingers and Rey builds into a rhythm, gently working her thighs to grind _just so_. Ben’s eyes are sent rolling, and he works his fingers as she shifts, the tempo growing faster, warmer, wetter. Rey’s hands are on his chest, pushing the very air from his lungs, and in an improvised moment she wraps a hand around his throat and _squeezes_. That is all it takes to send him spinning over the edge, like a punch to his gut, his fingers spasm and at the sensation of his orgasm through the bond Rey tumbles after him helplessly. 

He softens inside her, neither of them willing to break apart, both of them breathing heavily. Rey’s arms are shaking. Ben’s eyes are screwed shut. Her hand is still around his throat and he removes it, kissing her palm softly. Rey shifts slightly, allowing him to slip out of her with a shared groan. 

“That was...” she murmurs, trailing off. Ben understands. There are no words. He stretches, feeling his spine crack against the unforgiving metal and lifting Rey slightly where she is balanced across his hips. There is no room at all in this bunk but she slides down his body anyway, slinking into the circle of his arms and pressing the full length of her body against his. She throws a leg over his own, and Ben casually rests his hand where it cups her breast, idly playing with the cold-stiffened nipple. Rey nips his ear lobe playfully in return. 

“Goodnight,” Ben whispers, his lips against her forehead. 

“Goodnight,” Rey replies, happy to ignore the thought of the conversation that was to come in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone pass me a cigarette...


End file.
